Mahindra Group Renewable Arm Looking to Sell Solar Assets Worth 160 MW

Mahindra Susten, the renewable energy arm of the Mahindra group, has initiated the formal process to sell a portion of its solar assets worth a combined 160 MW.

The company’s renewable offerings include diversified services within the renewable energy and cleantech space, such as turnkey solar engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services, both utility-scale solar and rooftop solar products, solar car charging stations, telecom tower solarisation, operations and maintenance.

According to experts aware of the developments the company has begun reaching out to investors, both strategic and financial, to sell a part of their portfolio of solar assets. It is expected that the sale could fetch an enterprise valuation close to Rs 2,000 crore. The company which currently is following a build and sell model will look to invest the money raised from the sale of the assets to further develop its clean energy platform and pipeline.

There are increasing instances of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the Indian renewable energy space because of falling tariffs and the capital intensive nature of the business, particularly in the initial stage, making availability of low-cost funds critical for the success of a project.

In October 2018, Greenko Group, one of India’s largest renewable energy platforms, acquired Orange Renewable from Singapore’s AT Capital Group at an enterprise value of just under $1 billion and another 385MW of renewable assets from Skeiron Renewable Energy.

The combined deal of Orange and Skeiron added close to 1,300 MW operating and near completion wind and solar assets and increase Greenko’s overall operational capacity to about 4.5 GW of a well-diversified and de-risked portfolio of wind, solar and hydro.

Earlier this month, Suzlon Energy announced that it had completed the sale of two of its subsidiaries to Ostro Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of ReNew Power for Rs 29.8 crore. The two subsidiaries are the Shreyas Solar farms limited and Aalok Solar farms Limited, which own a combined 30 MW capacity of solar power projects in Rajasthan.

In March, the company announced the sale of two of its other subsidiaries (i) SE Solar and (ii) Gale Solar farms to CLP Wind Farms for a total consideration of Rs 99.09 crore.