Page 13 - Banking Finance AUGUST 2015
P. 13
ROUNDUP
More focus on R & D to cut renewable energy costs: Modi Soft Bank, Bharti, Foxconn
Prime Minister Narendra Modi while the collaboration of 50 countries with to set up $20 bn solar
addressing the ample solar radiation.
inaugural ses- venture
sion of Re-In- Power thrust
vest 2015, a Japan's Softbank, Sunil Bharti Mittal-
global investor Company MW led Bharti
Enterprises
meet for the renewable energy sector SunEdison 16,200 and Taiwan's
organised by the Ministry of New and Foxconn
Renewable Energy stated that rather ReNew Power 11,500 Te c h n o l o g y
than simply adding capacity, more fo- Welspun 11,001 recently
cus should be extended on research
and innovation in the renewable en- Azure power 11,000 teamed up to form a joint venture (JV)
ergy sector. Rasi Solar 10,600 to set up a 20 gigawart (GW) solar
and wind energy projects in India at
"Solar power costs have come down NTPC 10,000 an investment of about $20 billion.
over the years and are closing in to-
wards grid parity with thermal power. Hindustan Clean Energy 10,000 This would clearly be one of the big-
This has been possibly due to the R&D gest investment pledge till date in
that has taken place in the field. It will SkyPower 9,900 the country's renewable energy sec-
be R&D that will bring down prices Mytra Energy 7,000 tor. SoftBank, which owns one of
further," said Modi. He also called for Japan's biggest mobile carriers and is
Adani Power 6,000 the largest shareholder in chinese e-
commerce firm Alibaba, will have
Reliance Power 6,000 the majority control in the three-
Vikram Solar 5,500 way JV company - SB Cleantech -
with Bharti and Foxcom as minority
Hero Group 5,500 stakeholders.
SVCL to cater to MSMEs, start-ups through Rs.600 cr "Softbank will take the lead and re-
corpus sponsibility to make 20 CWE as a mini-
mum commitment in the solar space
SIDBI Venture Capital Ltd. (SVCL) the SVCL currently has under its fold five in India. In economic terms, grossly
wholly owned asset management funds with a combined worth of $20 billion will be the scale of invest-
company and subsidiary of SIDBI, is Rs.1,000 crore. Two of the funds - ment, and probably it could be one
looking to set up a corpus of Rs.600 where it invested Rs.100 crore and of largest investments by a foreign
crore across these funds. Rs.500 crore - have nearly been di- company in India," Softbank chairman
vested. These have secured returns (in- and CEO Masayoshi Son reported.
While two of the funds will cater to ternal rate of returns) to the tune of
state-specific micro small and medium 16.5 and 15 per cent, respectively. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi in-
enterprises and start-ups in West Ben- vited me to India during his visit to
gal and Maharashtra, the third will be According to Sarma, one of the funds Japan earlier. We endorse and sup-
an Impact Innovation Fund (IIF) for fi- dedicated to West Bengal-based port the PM's vision for 100 GW of
nancing innovative start-ups. MSMEs and started ups, is expected to clean energy by 2022. India has two
be ready over the next six months. time more sunshine than Japan and
"The state-specific funds will be raised cost of constructing solar park is half
in collaboration with the respective West Bengal government will make 50 that of Japan. That makes India four
state governments, while the IIF is per cent contribution (or Rs.100 crore) times more efficient in solar and
likely to be co-managed by an interna- towards this fund. wind energy than Japan" the
tional manager," Ananta P. Sarma, SoftBank CEO added.
MD and CEO, SVCL, said. "We have asked the WB government
to come up with names of the compa-
"We will have approximately Rs.200 nies where funding can be sought too.
crore in each of the three funds. De- In another six month's time this fund
tails on the IIF are still being worked should be ready," he said.
out," he said.
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