Freyr Energy, a Hyderabad-based rooftop solar company, has announced raising ₹270 million (~$3.81 million) through a mix of equity and debt investments.

The company has more than 1,000 installations across 18 States in India and a customer base in the U.S., Nigeria, and Ghana. In the last four years, it has recorded a 16 times growth in revenue and shown profit in the last two years.

Replying to a question on how attractive the domestic solar industry is for these types of funding, Saurabh Marda, the co-founder of Freyr Energy said, “VC funding is hard to come by for traditional EPC companies. However, if the business model is technology-enabled, unique and scalable, then, attracting funding is relatively easier”.

“Freyr Energy is committed to leveraging its technology platform to accelerate growth of decentralized solar both in India and major solar markets around the world. The funds raised will be used to continue improving our technology platform, increase strength of our sales and channel partner network and support our marketing activities to fuel future growth,” he added.

The round was led by C4D Partners, a Netherlands-based Impact Investment Fund.

Last year, Freyr Energy had received seed funding from Doen-Participaties, another Netherlands-based investment company working with innovative and sustainable start-ups.

A growing number of innovative start-ups in the sector have lately been securing attractive investments for their projects.

In June 2018, ZunRoof, an Indian solar rooftop start-up, raised ₹16.6 million ($0.25 million) in second round of angel funding from I3N (intellecap impact investment network) led by Pradeep Tharakan, senior energy specialist at Asian Development Bank (ADB), Vismay Sharma, managing director at L’Oreal (UK & Ireland), Ajith Pai (Paipal Ventures), Gaurav Gupta (Asia Director, Dalberg Advisors) and a group of IIT Kharagpur alumni based in the U.S.

Prior to that, Oorjan, a firm active in the rooftop solar PV segment, raised ₹30,867,600 ($450,000) in seed funding to help expand its presence in the Indian rooftop solar sector.

In September 2018, SenseHawk, a cloud-based enterprise platform leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) analytics on data collected from autonomous systems such as drones, has raised $2 million from SAIF Partners and other angel investors in Series A funding.

Earlier, Mercom reported that in the first half (1H) of 2018, the total corporate funding, including venture capital funding, public market, and debt financing rose to $5.3 billion, compared to the $4.6 billion raised in 1H 2017.