Fourth Partner Energy, a renewables power services company which focuses on building and financing solar rooftop projects, has raised Rs 250 crore ($33.6 million) in mezzanine financing from British development finance agency CDC Group.
“We have been building scale in the renewables power sector and this investment is on the distributed solar side of the sector,” said Srini Nagarajan, managing director and head of Asia at CDC.
The agency intends to back approximately 217 megawatts (MW) of new renewables capacity in India, primarily to get rid of thermal power and thus avoiding 258,000 tonnes of annual CO2 emissions.
Fourth Partner Energy was founded by Vivek Subramanian, Saif Dhorajiwala and Vikas Saluguti in 2010. It offers design, planning, construction, operation and maintenance services for solar energy plants.
“We have an aggressive target of three gigawatt (GW) solar capacity across all our verticals by 2025. This will mean significantly scaling up our portfolio while growing our battery storage, energy trading and EV (electric vehicle) charging capabilities,” said Subramanian.
The company has also entered the international market with a focus on South and Southeast Asia. In March last year, it forayed into the solar-powered EV charging infrastructure business via a joint venture with commercial EV fleet operator Lithium Urban Technologies.
Fourth Partner Energy manages a portfolio of 550 MW across its distributed and open access solar portfolios. The company has commenced operations across Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam.
In Indonesia, Fourth Partner Energy has tied up with integrated energy major Indika Energy to offer solar solutions to corporates there.
In September last year, the firm mopped up $16 million in mezzanine financing from a consortium of European impact investment funds led by Geneva-based Symbiotics, a market access platform for impact investing.
Around the middle of last year, Fourth Partner Energy secured $15 million (Rs 110 crore) in debt capital from ResponsAbility Investments AG, a Zurich-based impact investor that had also invested in 2016 and 2017.
The renewables space has seen some large transactions, especially in the solar energy sector.
Early this month, Radiance Renewables acquired solar rooftop assets of 152.5 MW capacity for Rs 536.5 crore.
In the previous month, Edelweiss Infrastructure Yield Plus concluded the acquisition of a controlling stake in the Indian solar energy assets of French utility Engie.
In December 2020, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), the country’s quasi-sovereign fund, led a $390 million funding round in Ayana Renewable Power.
