Client – Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation

Challenge
Mobilization and facilitation of partnerships across the DRE value chain
Dissemination of best practices for enterprises to scale.

Outcome
A convening programme for stakeholders in the energy ecosystem to overcome operational and financing challenges of DRE enterprises

Approach
More than 33 million households in India do not have access to grid electricity, and a significantly larger percentage of the population still remains underserved (receiving less than 4-5 hours of electricity per day). Access to reliable electricity remains one of the most critical challenges impeding social and economic upliftment of low income rural population. DRE enterprises are ensuring quality electricity supply for large sections of the population. However, inadequate resources available with DRE enterprises limit their ability to scale operations and raise capital.

Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation commissioned Intellecap to improve access to finance for clean energy access in India. To achieve this objective, Intellecap worked with 13 DRE enterprises across the value chain towards addressing challenges such as inadequate resources to scale operations, limited experience in raising capital and others mentioned during interactions with industry stakeholders that could allow these enterprises to absorb capital available in the sector.

Through Sankalp, Intellecap convened over 40 stakeholders to highlight the need for forming strategic alliances and understand high potential areas to form partnerships. Interactions were facilitated between various stakeholders including manufacturers, distributors, assemblers, NGOs and financial service providers. The focus was on enabling DRE enterprises to build on the local ecosystem of stakeholders to sustain and scale their operations. Intellecap helped connect DRE enterprises with MFIs and NGOs to help them leverage the customer base, extend reach, and also facilitate end user financing for their products.

As a result, various connects were established for DRE enterprises to help them overcome some of the operational challenges and promote financing in the sector.