Mumbai, May 3, 2023: Solar Ladder, a supply chain platform for Solar Installation companies today announced it has raised 11 Crores in seed funding from Axilor Ventures, Titan Capital, DeVC, Stride Ventures, and angels from Atha Group, NIPHA group, Varun Alagh (Founder, Mamaearth), Subin Mitra and Aditya Bandi of Groyyo, Deepak Jain (Partner, Bain and Co.) among others.
The recently acquired funds will be utilized to distribute software that automates processes for solar installers, allowing them to expand their business tenfold and aims to become the go-to ecosystem for solar installation companies. Solar Ladder aims to establish a robust marketplace that enables cheaper procurement, provides short-term embedded credit and insurance products to meet installers’ working capital requirements, and offers long-term financing options for end customers of solar installers.
Its suite of services includes SaaS, procurement, financing, and other value-added services. The Solar Ladder SaaS tool provides end-to-end, sales-to-project management to operations and maintenance resources to solar installation companies looking to grow their business, while its procurement layer assists with the acquisition of solar modules, inverters, structures, balance of system, and other necessary materials. The financing layer offers both short-term and long-term loans, with short-term loans available for credit on platform purchases and long-term financing available for end customers, enabling solar installers to increase their sales. The company currently has over 250+ customers, including major players such as Mahindra Solarize and Fourth Partner Energy.
India’s solar rooftop market has experienced a consistent upward trend in recent years, largely thanks to government initiatives and a growing understanding of the advantages of renewable energy. According to recent reports, India’s potential for rooftop solar is estimated at 200 GW. In FY22, the country added 1.7 gigawatt (GW) of rooftop solar capacity, the highest ever in a fiscal, such installations were up 136 percent compared to 719 MW in FY20. In the first quarter of FY23, 456 MW of rooftop solar capacity was added, the second-highest for a quarter.
Commenting on the funding, Manan Mehta, Co-Founder, Solar Ladder said, “India’s per capita electricity consumption is significantly lower than the global average, and rooftop solar energy is the most cost-effective means of generating electricity. By adopting rooftop solar energy India has a unique chance to decentralize its power supply and enhance the quality of life for all citizens. The key to seizing this opportunity lies with the solar installers who are striving to implement rooftop solar on a large scale. Solar Ladder aims to facilitate faster scaling for these installers by providing them with appropriate financial, procurement, and software tools.”
“We at Solar Ladder are committed to helping solar installers grow their business 10x. In the fiercely competitive domain of rooftop solar installation companies, Solar Ladder aspires to equip local installers in every city with state-of-the-art technologies and services to enhance their capabilities”, added Abhishek Pillai, Co-founder, Solar Ladder.
“Solar Ladder is building a digital flywheel in one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy, globally. The India opportunity alone in residential and commercial solar installations is well above $50 billion. We are confident in the founding team to scale the company as a key enabler, bringing procurement transparency and credit availability in a highly fragmented and broken supply chain.”- Prachi Sinha, Axilor Ventures.
“Solar Ladder is one of the most capital-efficient and frugally innovative teams we’ve invested in. The founders have been passionately working on ground and understand every facet of the industry. Their early set of customers have grown manifolds and we are excited to see them replicate the business model on a larger scale.” – Bipin Shah, Partner, Titan Capital
Founded in 2021 by Manan Mehta, Abhishek Pillai, and Farhan Ahmed, Solar Ladder is a comprehensive supply chain platform. The Solar Ladder team has achieved profitability while being bootstrapped. The team committed almost three years to the product’s development and in acquiring valuable industry insights and key partnerships through on-field experience. Solar Ladder has received awards and grants from various organizations such as YCombinator Startup School (USA), London School of Economics (UK), Govt of India (India), and Facebook.
About Solar Ladder
Solar Ladder is a full-stack supply chain platform helping Solar Installation companies to deploy rooftop Solar faster. The SaaS tool helps Solar installation companies 10x their sales, execute projects while reducing delays, and automate after-sales service. The procurement marketplace helps Solar installers with end-to-end fulfilment, price and product discovery, and quality control. The financing layer enables Installers to get short-term working capital credit for completing projects timely and enables long-term financing for end customers
About Axilor Ventures
Founded in 2014, Axilor Ventures is among the top 3 most active seed funds operating out of India. Axilor Ventures invests in early-stage startups across sectors in the supply chain/B2B commerce, Enterprise SaaS, Healthtech, AgriTech, Fintech, and consumer internet space. Axilor Ventures was founded and backed by Indian tech pioneers, including Kris Gopalakrishnan, SD Shibulal, Prof. Tarun Khanna, Srinath Batni, and Ganapathy Venugopal.
