Suzlon Acquires 51% Stake In Wind O&M Services Firm Renom

Suzlon Group, India’s largest renewable energy solutions provider, has executed definitive agreements for the acquisition of a 76% stake in Renom Energy Services Private Limited (“Renom”), in two tranches, from the Sanjay Ghodawat Group (SGG). Renom is the largest Multi Brand Operations and Maintenance service (“MBOMS”) provider in the country with assets of 1,782 MW in Wind, 148 MW in Solar, and 572 MW in BOP under maintenance across customer segments. Wind O&M tends to be more complex and expensive than say, solar O&M, and as capacity grows, is expected to be a strong growth business  business on its own right in India.

The first tranche from Suzlon involves the acquisition of a 51% stake for a consideration of INR 400 cr. In the second tranche, Suzlon will acquire an additional 25% stake within 18 months from the acquisition of the first tranche for a consideration of INR 260 cr. The closure of the transaction is subject to the completion of certain condition precedents. This deal will enable Renom to leverage the massive opportunity of targeting over 32 GW of non-Suzlon wind energy assets in the country today.

Girish Tanti, Vice Chairman, Suzlon Group,said on the acquisition, “With India’s target to achieve 500 GW of renewable energy installations by 2030, we shall see a multitude of different technologies and wind turbines of various makes in the market going ahead. Renom has emerged as a single largest player in this domain with great strength and potential to tap further into this market segment. This acquisition aligns with Suzlon Group’s vision of leveraging growth while safeguarding our country’s renewable energy assets, irrespective of their original make.”

“We admire Renom’s intrinsic strengths as an ISP, and we compliment the Sanjay Ghodawat Group for building the same with such vision and commitment. Sanjayji Ghodawat has been a long-standing well-wisher of the Suzlon Group, and we look forward to a successful partnership with the SGG.”

JP Chalasani, Chief Executive Officer, Suzlon Group, said, “At Suzlon, we have built our service business over decades with a single-minded focus, seeing it as a key enabler of energy transition. With our in-house Suzlon Services Business focussed on Suzlon-make turbines and now with Renom’s focus on non-Suzlon Multi Brand Renewable Energy Assets, we are comprehensively positioned across the Indian Renewables OMS sector. We intend to support and strengthen Renom further as a standalone ISP to help provide best-in-class customer service to all multi-make customers in the wind energy O&M space.”

Shrenik Ghodawat, Managing Director, Sanjay Ghodawat Group,said, “Over the period of the last 9 years, we have built Renom to be the best at what it does. Our purpose in aligning with the Suzlon Group is to ensure that Renom as a brand continues to grow multi-fold and offer our existing and new customers best-in-class services. This strategic move not only provides Renom the platform to grow alongside the Suzlon Group but also allows SGG to focus on its core verticals of Aviation, Education, Consumer Products, and Retail. I’m certain that the Suzlon Group will take Renom to even greater heights.”

The Renom acquisition, coming at a time when it has emerged stronger out of a financial restructuring and has a record order book and profitability  to look ahead, makes this a very defining acquisition for Suzlon. Key competitor Inox Green has already been working on strengthening its O&M business, with the acquisition of Windtechnik. With this acquisition, Suzlon has probably surprised quite a few people, simply by moving much earlier than many may have imagined.