Vikram Solar and Waaree Energies have hired investment banks for their respective initial public offerings (IPOs), three people aware of the matter told, as the solar panel manufacturers aim to expand business riding the drive for local manufacturing.
Both firms are looking to raise around Rs 1,500 crore each, the people cited above said on condition of anonymity.
“Vikram Solar has appointed JM Financial and has started working on its IPO, while Waaree has appointed Axis Capital and ICICI Securities for its
IPO,” one of the three people said. “While both companies want to raise capital to invest in expanding their manufacturing capacities, in the case of Vikram Solar, a substantial part of the proceeds will also go towards reducing its debt. Waaree is practically debt-free at the moment,” he stated.
“There is a strong government thrust to scale up domestic manufacturing of solar panels, given the large capacities that India plans to set up in the coming years and so far, there has been a very high dependence on imports of solar panels, especially from China. The government’s plans to bring in high duties on imports of solar panels and cells is a big boost for domestic manufacturers,” the second person cited above stated.
India is running the world’s largest clean energy programme to accomplish 175GW of renewable capacity, including 100GW of solar power by 2022. As per the Central Electricity Authority, by 2030, the country’s power requirement would be 817GW, more than half of which would be clean energy; of this, 280GW would be from solar energy alone.
To reach the target of 280GW, around 25GW of solar energy capacity is required to be installed every year till 2030.
