Skilancer Solar Raises Fresh Funding, Venture Catalysts Backs the Firm Now

Solar Panel Cleaning Firm Skilancer Solar Private Limited, has raised a fresh round of funding, this time from Venture Catalysts.

The Noida-based firm, which has its works in Faridabad, has been co-founded by Neeraj Kumar and Manish Kumar Das, both of them engineers with a background in the solar sector for Neeraj and for Das, in business development.

Skilancer Solar has focused on solar cleaning equipment, an area where Neeraj believed an opportunity existed, due to the issues of cleaning itself as well as wastage and maintenance. That is how the firm earlier raised what is described by them as a seed round from Alfa Ventures, which we had reported on last year.

Currently, they claim to be serving more than 200 mW of solar plant O&M having clients like Tata power, Shree cement and Adani power.

On the current funding, Neeraj adds that “Right now we are focusing only on large scale solar plants but with this funding round we are developing cleaning solution for small rooftop systems and our future development includes facade cleaning systems for buildings.”

The firms founders reckon that there is a market size of 50 GW or 50,000 MW (USD 5 billion) available to them. “With shift of the world toward sustainable growth solar market is expected to grow exponentially. Our product is technologically advanced and economical as compared to other companies. Maintenance cost and frequency of the robot itself is very less as compared to competitors.” Neeraj says.

As one of the rare funded startups in the solar space, what has been their biggest challenge? “Our biggest challenge is introducing a new kind of O&M tool to the market where most people are comfortable with traditional methods.

But with time and decreasing cost of solar energy plant owners are exploring new and effective ways of cleaning and we are also growing with that”, adds Neeraj.

The founders are hopeful that the latest (undisclosed amount) funds infusion will allow the startup to invest in design and technology upgrade, geographical expansion, team building, and to develop a competitive edge.

For the solar cleaning, or even broader maintainance market is a very competitive market today, with both specialised players, and established module makers even, having stepped in to take a slice of the market.