Private investment in solar module manufacturing firms on the rise
BIG LEAP. Policy support, strong domestic demand have brought sector on their radar
Rohan Das
Chennai
Solar module makers in India are seeing a surge in interest of private market investors as they scale their manufacturing presence and move into upstream components like cells, wafers and ingots.
According to data from market research firm Tracxn, over the last five years, private investments in module manufacturing companies have gone up nearly tenfold. In 2026 (YTD), these companies raised about $460 million in equity funding, while in 2025, the figure was around $322.5 million. This is a significant spike compared to $29.3 million in 2023.
JSW Solar’s ₹1,422 crore raise from Havells and other private investors, Grew Solar bagging ₹1,050 crore from Bay Capital Investment Ltd, alongside institutional investors, and ReNew Photovoltaics’ $700 million raise from the development financial institution, International Investment Services were some of the marquee deals over this period. The share of each investor could not be ascertained as Tracxn tracks value of the entire round.
Speaking to businessline, investors said that in the past, the majority of capital came from strategic investors. However, policy support, alongside strong domestic demand, had brought the sector into venture capital and equity firm focus.
RISE IN CAPACITY
Ankit Jain, Vice-President, Co-group Head – Corporate Ratings, ICRA, suggested that India’s module manufacturing capacity reached more than 200 GW as of June 2026, a sharp rise from 67.3 GW as of February 2025. “On the demand side, there has been sizeable capacity addition with schemes such as PM Kusum and PM Surya Ghar supporting module demand, while policies like ALMM, PLI and imposition of customs duty have enabled manufacturers to scale up capacity,” he said.
Vineet Bhatia, Partner – Energy & Infrastructure, Thornton Bharat, suggested that module manufacturing had evolved from being a commodity business to becoming a strategic growth opportunity. “Historically, low margins, high import dependency and technology shifting up operations kept venture capital and private equity interest in solar manufacturing low, and the sector was mainly driven by strategic investors whose focus was more integration than return. However, nonetheless, the outlook is drastically changing now,” he said.
Industry policy signals from the Centre on mandatory domestic content coupled with large-scale investments, he added. Companies are planning a phase-wise capital investment in the industry, beginning with cells in the near term, wafers and ingots in the medium term, and eventually extending to the broader ecosystem,” Bhatia said.
Vipul Kumar, Managing Director and Head of India, South Asia-Energy Investment, said, “Building global competitive manufacturing capacity requires patient capital and an enabling ecosystem; it cannot be assessed through the lens of short-term returns alone. Our focus is on backing teams with deep domain fundamentals, sound governance, and a vision to remain competitive over the long term”.
Centre says no communication with TN on Parandur airport
Our Bureau
Chennai
The Union Civil Aviation Ministry has not received any intimation from the newly elected Tamil Nadu Government, led by the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), on whether it wants to proceed with the proposed ₹27,000 crore greenfield airport at Parandur or put it on hold, according to highly placed sources.
Sources in the Ministry told businessline that the State government is yet to inform the Centre about its plans for the second airport. “We are not aware whether they are dropping the project or proceeding with it. We have already issued the approval for the land,” Ministry sources said. The ball is now in the State’s court, and any decision on the project now rests with the State government, the source added.
The clarification comes following widespread speculation over the fate of the proposed airport after the formation of the TVK government. Statements by senior Ministers in the TVK Cabinet on environmental concerns regarding several infrastructure development projects have triggered a debate on whether Parandur should be shelved and an alternative site identified.
Meanwhile, businessline has learnt that a delegation of senior Tamil Nadu government officials is scheduled to visit New Delhi on Monday to hold discussions with central government officials on various projects supported by agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It is not known whether the Parandur airport project will be part of the discussions.
PROJECT REVIEWED
Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, soon after assuming office, had backed villagers and farmers opposing the project over concerns regarding loss of livelihood and environmental impact. At the same time, there has been speculation that he has reviewed the project, although no details have emerged. Senior State government officials have denied that any such discussions have taken place.
A notification issued by the previous DMK government declared the Parandur New Greenfield Airport Project a “Special Project” under the Tamil Nadu Land Consolidation (Special Projects) Act, 2023. The notification was issued on March 2, days before the Model Code of Conduct came into force. However, State cabinet sources said there is no legal bar on the part of the new administration from discontinuing the project despite its Special Project status.
Industry representatives have warned that scrapping the airport would be a setback for Chennai, arguing that the city has already lost passenger and cargo traffic to neighbouring Hyderabad and Bengaluru, and that a second airport would help arrest that trend.
Retail inflation likely breached 4% mark in June
Shishir Sinha
New Delhi
Driven by surging food costs and the waning of the base effect of global fuel hikes, retail inflation based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) is expected to have crossed the 4 per cent mark in June after a 16-month hiatus.
While the 4 per cent is the Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) target, it is yet to hold policy rates steady due to its “withdrawal of accommodation” stance.
Under the new 2024 base series, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation had dropped from 2.74 per cent in January 2016 to 3.93 per cent in May 2024. It has remained persistently in the last month alone. CPI-based inflation had touched 3.9 per cent in May.
In its recent monetary policy review, the Finance Ministry’s latest Monthly Economic Review noted that the ongoing West Asia crisis and subsequent global shocks were keeping domestic inflationary pressures on an upward trajectory as energy costs diffuse through the economy.
GROWTH RISKS
Further, it said that while easing oil prices and improving global supply chains in the long run could help alleviate some external pressure, the uncertainty surrounding the monsoon and geopolitical tensions in West Asia continue to pose downside risks to growth and upside risks to the inflation outlook.
The MPC has projected retail inflation for the April-June quarter at 4.9 per cent.
According to Jahnavi Prabhakar, Economist at Bank of Baroda, BoE Estimates, CPI-based inflation in June is seen at its sharpest pace since early 2024. “June CPI is expected to hover around 4.5-4.6 per cent, on y-o-y basis. In July 2026, the build-up is even higher (first 6 days) at 2.1 per cent,” as national food prices continue to remain high.
Given the recent developments around the pick up in the South-West monsoon, kharif acreage and reservoir level, careful monitoring of the spatial distribution of rain as well as of El Nino conditions is needed in the coming days.
TILTED UPSIDE
The overall reservoir storage position as on July 2 is at a lower level as the normal storage for the corresponding period. “Against this backdrop, we expect CPI to settle at 4.2 per cent in June 2026, with risks tilted to the upside,” she said.
Radhika Rao, Senior Economist, DBS Bank also expects the headline number to cross the 4 per cent mark. “June CPI inflation is expected to have picked up marginally to 4.1 per cent y-o-y from 3.9 per cent the month before, on continued normalisation in food segments and pass-through of telecom hikes and the related segments,” she said while adding that beyond food and fuel, upside risks to core inflation appear limited, amid softer gold and precious metal prices and little scope for further pump-price adjustments.
Wayfaring through life
Uncertainty requires a deliberate way of thinking
BOOK REVIEW
Srinivas Sastry
Strategy is usually associated with organisations. We talk about strategy for businesses, products, markets and careers. Yet one of the more interesting questions Surya Ramkumar asks in her book Strategy for Life is this: If strategy is valuable enough to guide complex organisations, then why do so many people leave their own lives to chance?
The question becomes particularly relevant at a time when traditional markers of success are becoming increasingly fluid. Career paths are no longer linear, and social norms are constantly being redefined. Many individuals succeed through planning. Rather, they are uncertain about what comes next. This is the gap the book attempts to address.
Drawing on her experiences across leadership roles at McKinsey and Microsoft, Ramkumar approaches life not as a sequence of events but as a strategic challenge. Her argument is not that life can be controlled through planning. Rather, it is that uncertainty itself demands a more deliberate way of thinking.
NAVIGATING VS WAYFARING
One idea that recurs throughout the book is the distinction between navigation and wayfaring. Navigation assumes a known destination and a predefined route. Wayfaring describes a changing landscape where progress depends less on following a map and more on continuously interpreting the surroundings. This distinction captures the reality of modern leadership.
Organisations and individuals alike operate in environments where yesterday’s assumptions rarely remain valid for long. The landscape is in constant flux. In such environments, strategy becomes less about prediction and more about preparedness.
This perspective runs through many of the frameworks presented in the book. Whether discussing strategy tools like the Problem Priority Index, the Strategy House or the Red Thread, Ramkumar repeatedly returns to the central theme: making conscious choices about what deserves attention and what does not.
What I found particularly interesting was the discussion on prioritization. Many professionals spend considerable energy optimising activities without questioning whether those activities deserve optimisation in the first place.
The book argues that clarity often comes not from doing more things well, but from identifying the one problem whose resolution changes everything else.
This mirrors an observation frequently seen in organisations. High-performing companies are not necessarily those with the most initiatives. They are often the ones with the clearest understanding of where focus should be applied. The same principle appears to hold true at an individual level.
Another theme that stands out is the relationship between aspiration and influence.
In professional life, people often inherit goals from peers, institutions, industries or social expectations without realising it. Ramkumar’s discussion around desires, goals and influences prompts readers to ask an important question: how many of our ambitions are genuinely ours, and how many have simply been absorbed from the environment around us?
The question is particularly relevant in an age where comparison has become continuous and highly visible. Where the book is strongest, however, is not in its frameworks. It is in the conversations those frameworks provoke.
Questions such as “What problem is truly worth solving?”, “What is enough?”, and “Whose definition of success am I pursuing?” stay with the reader long after the individual models have faded from memory.
Book Details:
- Title: Strategy for Life
- Author: Surya Ramkumar
- Publisher: Penguin Random House
- Price: ₹399
The reviewer is a certified leadership coach and writes on human-centric leadership models.
Understanding the rise of ‘agentic commerce’
Short take
Sita Mishra
The biggest question in online shopping may not be what consumers buy but who makes the purchase decision. As artificial intelligence evolves from offering recommendations to acting as autonomous users, consumers may increasingly delegate searching, comparing, evaluating, and even purchasing to intelligent agents. This emerging transformation is known as agentic commerce.
Imagine asking an AI assistant to compare smartphones within a budget, analyze reviews, track prices, and complete the purchase automatically. Or allowing AI to reorder household essentials whenever better deals appear. Rather than replacing consumers entirely, agentic commerce changes how decisions are made by reducing effort and cognitive load.
Consumers today operate in an environment of information overload and endless choice. Comparing alternatives across platforms often creates decision fatigue and slow purchase decisions. Agentic commerce promises convenience by delegating non-essential portions of the consumer decision-making process. AI agents can personalize recommendations, compare alternatives in real time, and optimize outcomes based on consumer preferences and constraints. From a consumer behavior perspective, this reflects bounded rationality, where consumers seek satisfactory rather than perfectly informed decisions.
FERTILE GROUND
India presents a fertile ground for agentic commerce because consumers are increasingly comfortable with digital payments, online marketplaces, and technology-enabled services. At the same time, Indian consumers remain highly value-conscious and promotion-sensitive. AI agents could strengthen this value-seeking behavior by enabling faster price comparisons and reducing information asymmetry between buyers and sellers. However, adoption may vary across categories. High-involvement purchases such as travel, fashion, and premium products may continue to involve greater consumer participation because these decisions carry emotional and symbolic value.
THE CHALLENGE OF TRUST
Trust may become the defining challenge. Consumers may question whether AI agents truly represent their interests or are influenced by platform incentives and commercial partnerships. This concern connects to perceived manipulation, algorithmic transparency, and consumer autonomy. Marketing research has long shown that consumers value perceived control during decision-making.
Excessive automation may weaken this feeling and create resistance, even when outcomes are superior. Agentic commerce also introduces trust transfer, where confidence must extend not only to brands but also to the AI intermediary making recommendations. If AI makes a poor purchase decision, who is accountable? If algorithms become marketplace gatekeepers, how will brands earn visibility? These questions are important.
The writer is Professor (Marketing), IMT Ghaziabad
ZincGel vs Li-ion battery
M Ramesh
Chennai
Recently, Offgrid Energy Labs, an Indian startup incubated at IIT-Kanpur, announced it is planning a 10 MWh pilot manufacturing facility in the UK to produce battery cells based on its proprietary ZincGel technology.
The company intends the UK plant to be a proving ground; the experience gained there, it says, will be used to establish large-scale manufacturing in India, where battery demand is expected to rise sharply as renewable energy capacity expands.
Unlike lithium-ion batteries, which rely on imported lithium, ZincGel uses zinc and graphite, both of which are abundantly available in India. The ZincGel technology differs in many other ways too. The basic zinc-bromine chemistry is nothing new, but it has not come into common use because of some key problems, mainly dendrite formation and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER).
Dendrites are tiny metallic needles that emerge during repeated charging; they can pierce the separator and short-circuit the cell. Hydrogen affects the cell’s efficiency by wasting a part of the charging energy and increasing internal pressure.
Offgrid Energy Labs says the key lies in its proprietary electrolyte, which makes its anode-less architecture possible. The anode-less architecture, where the anode is formed inside the cell during charging and disappears during discharging, is something that researchers have been toying with for a while. It is a mouthwatering idea because it saves the anode material completely.
PROPRIETARY TECH
Offgrid Energy Labs says it has cracked the technology. Instead of using a zinc metal anode from the outset, the battery starts with a bare current collector. During charging, zinc from the electrolyte is deposited onto this collector and dissolves back into the electrolyte during discharge. This reduces material use and simplifies cell construction.
The startup’s proprietary gel-based aqueous electrolyte, containing zinc bromide, additional zinc salts, and specialised additives, prevents dendrite formation. Specialised additives act as leveling agents and grain refiners, ensuring that zinc deposits as a dense, uniform layer instead of growing into needle-like dendrites.
The electrolyte is also designed to suppress hydrogen evolution. According to the company, proprietary additives bind free water molecules and reduce the unwanted side reactions that produce hydrogen gas. At the positive electrode, activated carbon derived from coconut shells is used to trap bromine within its microscopic pores, thereby reducing bromine migration and improving both safety and cycle life.
ELECTROLYTE’S ROLE
Offgrid Energy Lab’s technology flags a significant trend in the evolution of electrochemical cell design. The electrolyte functions far from a passive medium through which ions pass from one electrode to the other. But the emerging approach—as evident in Offgrid Energy’s cell—is to expand the role of the electrolyte.
In ZincGel, the proprietary electrolyte is an active participant that performs many functions, such as suppressing dendrites and hydrogen evolution, and stabilizing bromine. The startup, which raised $15 million from Archean Chemical Industries last year, has combined ternary techniques (gel electrolytes, additives, bromine-trapping carbon materials and anode-free architecture) to make a unique battery.
It says its system can deliver more than 6,000 charge-discharge cycles with round-trip efficiencies of 80-90 per cent.
Offgrid Energy is careful not to position ZincGel as a replacement for lithium-ion batteries, but as complementary in applications that require long-duration energy storage rather than high energy density. While lithium-ion remains the preferred choice for electric vehicles and portable electronics, Offgrid Energy says zinc-bromine batteries offer advantages for grid balancing, renewable energy integration and industrial backup, where batteries are expected to discharge over 6-12 hours, operate safely over long periods and deliver thousands of charge-discharge cycles.
IIT-M revives forgotten route to industrial wastewater treatment
Researchers overcome long-standing bottleneck in technology based on gas hydrates
Team Quantum
For decades, scientists have known that gas hydrates—ice-like crystals formed when water traps certain gases under specific temperature and pressure conditions—could, in principle, purify contaminated water.
The idea was always attractive. Water locks itself into crystals while salts and other impurities are left behind. But there was a catch. Separating the crystals from the remaining wastewater proved cumbersome and energy-intensive, preventing the technology from competing with membrane-based systems, such as reverse osmosis (RO).
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, now say they have overcome that bottleneck. The team has developed and patented a gas hydrate-based process that forms hydrate crystals directly in the gaseous phase, eliminating the need for filtration or centrifugation to separate them from wastewater.
In tests using actual petrochemical effluent supplied by CPCL (India) Ltd, the system recovered more than 65 per cent of the water, removed 84.93 per cent of contaminants, and recycled over 95 per cent of the hydrate-forming gases back into the process.
AN ALTERNATIVE TO RO
Developed by Dr Subhash Kumar Sharma under the supervision of Prof Rajnish Kumar, the process offers an alternative to RO. (RO) membranes are prone to fouling, require periodic replacement and generate solid waste. Hydrate processes avoid membranes but consume significantly more energy.
A mixture of propane and HFC-134a is introduced into the contaminated wastewater under carefully controlled temperature and pressure. Water molecules assemble around the gas molecules, forming solid hydrate crystals while salts, ammonia, suspended solids and organic contaminants remain in the liquid.
The crystals are then gently melted to recover purified water, while the gases are captured and reused in the next cycle.
The technology consumed 3.88 kWh of electricity for every cubic metre of water recovered—comparable to seawater reverse osmosis and substantially better than net desalination methods. The researchers estimate a levelised water cost of about 14 paise a litre and claim a carbon footprint 35-70 per cent lower than that of conventional membrane and heat-based technologies. The treated water met the Central Pollution Control Board standards for industrial reuse.
Kumar said the process could help industries reduce freshwater consumption while meeting increasingly stringent zero liquid discharge requirements.
The technology is at readiness level 4, indicating it has passed second laboratory proof-of-concept. The team plans pilot-scale demonstrations using wastewater from the pharmaceutical, textile and fertilizer industries.
