India emerged as the third largest solar market in the world behind China and the United States after a record 9.6 GW of solar installations in 2017 – more than double the 4.3 GW installed in 2016.

The newly released Mercom India’s India Solar Market Leaderboard 2018 report reveals the market leaders that emerged from a record year for the solar industry. The report covers market share and shipment rankings across the Indian solar supply chain in 2017.

According to the report, the top 10 solar photovoltaic (PV) project developers in the country accounted for over 62 percent of all large-scale project installations in calendar year 2017.  There were also approximately 200 utility-scale project developers in the country with projects of at least 5 MW or more in operation.

Mercom’s detailed analysis of the winners of major solar auctions held across the country over the past 12 months also clearly indicated that bidding has been dominated by larger, more established companies.

Adani emerged as the largest project developer in terms of total cumulative installations through the end of 2017, but Greenko grabbed the spot for top installer in 2017.

NLC had the largest pipeline of utility-scale projects under development followed by ACME. India’s pipeline of utility-scale projects under development stood at approximately 10.6 GW at year-end 2017, with another 4.3 GW of tenders pending auction.

Cumulative solar rooftop installations in India totaled 1.6 GW at the end of 2017, of which 995 MWs were installed last year. In 2017, the top 10 installers made up only 26 percent of all rooftop projects installed in India, leaving all other rooftop developers with almost 75 percent of the market share and showing the fragmented nature of the sector. Tata Power emerged with the largest rooftop portfolio, followed by CleanMax.

“In 2017, larger players started consolidating their positions at the top as India has quickly emerged as one of the most important solar markets in the world for suppliers and vendors,” said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group.

In an extremely competitive market where margins are getting slimmer every day, Sterling and Wilson was the leading engineering procurement construction (EPC) company.

As of last December, ABB was the top inverter supplier both cumulatively and in 2017 even with Chinese inverter suppliers growing at a fast pace.

Trina Solar was the top module supplier in 2017.

Over 30 companies supplied trackers to the Indian solar market in 2017 with NEXTracker emerging as the top supplier.

“A common theme in the report was that most of the top companies in their categories were well established players, but there are other companies with high year-over-year growth rates that are competing hard in this highly competitive market,” added Prabhu.

Get the complete list of market leaders with installation and supply figures in the full report