Waaree, Metafin Partner to Offer Lending Solutions

The company said the loan will cover up to 70 percent of the total project cost and repayable through easy EMIs.

To make solar energy more accessible, leading PV module maker and EPC services provider Waaree Energies has partnered with Metafin Cleantech, an NBFC specialising in renewable energy and clean tech, to provide easy lending.

With this partnership, Waaree will offer a unique financial lending facility for solar solutions with special focus on the residential and the small-scale segment. The company claimed that the loan will cover up to 70 percent of the total project cost repayable through easy EMIs.

Commenting on the development, Waaree Energies’ Director Sunil Rathi said “we have observed that despite increasing awareness and demand of solar solutions in small and residential segment, the adoption of such technologies is slower due to the high cost of solar projects.”

He further added that “it is relatively easier for the mid and large segment to avail of the OPEX model and thus eradicate the need for heavy investments. Hence, the ease of financing through Waaree in association with NBFCs is intended to bridge such gaps and cater to the ever-evolving need of the solar segment. Coupled with state specific residential subsidies, this offering is expected to create financial viability for the end consumer.”

“With our countrywide network, we aim to make this feature available across India and provide benefits of green energy,” Rathi said.

“In our view retail segment for solar is currently relatively under-penetrated. This is largely due to the lack of financing options to solve the upfront capital problem, availability of reliable system installation & technology and ongoing system maintenance,” said Sandeep Chopra, CEO of Metafin.

Commenting on the partnership, Chopra said “by partnering with Waaree Energies (and their retail network) along-with our innovative financing schemes we believe we can solve these problems for retail customers resulting in accelerated adoption of solar as a preferred source of energy.”

Aditya Shah, Director of Metafin said “Metafin’s strength in credit assessment, deep understanding of the solar sector and innovative financial products designed around our customer’s needs positions us well to scale robustly at a PAN-India level. We enable customers to adopt solar power to reduce their cost of energy which has driven significant inbound demand over the past several months.”

With typical small scale installations costing around Rs 45,000 per Kw and beyond, a typical home set up of 3 to 5Kw can easily cross Rs 2 lacs for the buyer. On a typical tenure of 12 to 36 months for such loans, it could potentially be a game changer. Thus, financing was a real need, and opportunity too for this sector. Preventing that for financiers so far has been the commodified  nature of the suppliers in the market, the value of solar assets once installed, the issue with say reposession, in case of a bad loan, and of course, delays caused by regulatory challenges like permission to start net metering etc. Waaree Energies, as a firm with a strong pedigree in the sector, has tried to solve multiple problems with the tie-up. It should be very interesting to evaluate how it performs.