Hyderabad-based solar power services provider Freyr Energy Services Pvt. Ltd is in advanced talks with several potential investors in India and Europe to raise seed funding for supporting its expansion plans, a top company executive told VCCircle.
Co-founder and managing director Saurabh Marda said the company will raise Rs 5 crore ($745,000) in this round, mainly to install solar systems and marketing. He declined to identify the potential investors.
Separately, a person privy to the development said that one of the potential investors is based in the Netherlands.
The startup provides turnkey solutions for distributed solar energy generation systems ranging from 1 kW to 200 kW. It focuses on rooftop systems (commercial and residential), petrol pumps and micro grids.
The company says it is working toward meeting the basic power requirements of an entire village by setting up micro grids. This involves creating an entire ecosystem such as poles, cables, control room and lights, said Marda, an alumnus of Yale University.
The company, which Marda launched in 2014 along with Radhika Choudary, previously raised Rs 4 crore in its angel round of funding from a Hyderabad-based affluent individual.
Before starting Freyr, Marda worked at companies including Nuevo Power Inc. and Marakon. Choudary, an alumnus of Purdue University, earlier worked at companies including SunEdison Inc. and Lanco Solar Pvt. Ltd.
Freyr has installed about 650 systems across India and Ghana in the past 18 months. More than half of these are in southern cities such as Hyderabad, Nellore and Bengaluru, according to a company spokesperson.
India's renewable energy sector has seen several startups getting funding and some big investment announcements over the past two years after the government scaled up the green energy capacity target to 100 gigawatt of solar capacity and 60 gigawatt of wind power by 2022.
In May, Chennai-based startup SolarTown Energy Solutions Pvt. Ltd raised funding through GREX, an exchange-like platform that connects startups and investors. Last year, Hyderabad-based distributed solar power firm Fourth Partner Energy Pvt. Ltd raised close to $2 million in Series A funding.
Among big-sized deals, renewable energy firm Greenko raised $230 million from sovereign wealth funds of Abu Dhabi and Singapore in June.
In April, Finnish energy company Fortum said it planned to invest €200-400 million ($228-456 million) in solar projects in India. Japan's SoftBank joined hands with Bharti Enterprises and Foxconn to bet big on Indian solar power sector.
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