SunSource founder launches renewable energy platform with ₹10,000 cr plan
Renewable energy investor Kushagra Nandan, who co-founded SunSource Energy in 2011 and biofuel firm REDynamics in 2024, has launched a new cleantech company called LNK Energy along with another investor, Varun Karad, and Paritish Ladhani, joint managing director of SLMG Beverages, the largest bottler of Coca-Cola in India.
The trio plans to invest around ₹10,000 crore across three areas — manufacturing of solar cells and modules, green fuels including green hydrogen, and renewable energy development — over the next five years, beginning with a factory in Maharashtra.
The first project covers a 6 gigawatt solar cell and module manufacturing plant with an integrated ingot and wafer facility coming up at Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar in Maharashtra. The new company, incorporated last year, has already signed a memorandum of understanding with the Maharashtra government for the project.
Over time, LNK Energy will also manufacture key adjacencies such as junction boxes, battery platforms and related energy storage components, supporting the development of a robust domestic clean energy ecosystem, the three investors told Business Standard in an interview.
In the long run, the idea is to build a renewable energy generation portfolio as an independent power producer (IPP) and through hybrid open-access solutions, integrating storage, solar and other forms of renewable energy, creating a fully integrated platform spanning manufacturing, fuels and operating assets.
“In the first phase of setting up the plant in Maharashtra, we plan to invest ₹1,000 crore. We have already received the approvals from the lenders, mostly domestic, for raising ₹700 crore for that project while the rest ₹300 crore will be put in by us as equity,” Ladhani said. The entire ₹10,000 crore investment will be used for setting up the Maharashra plant.
“In the first phase, we plan to invest ₹1,000 crore to set up the Maharashtra plant. We have already received approvals from lenders, mostly domestic, for raising ₹700 crore for that project, while the remaining ₹300 crore will be put in by us as equity,” Ladhani said.
The three investors said the time has come for new-age manufacturing to be integrated with renewable energy technologies and long-term patient capital in India, starting with solar manufacturing and batteries and eventually entering green fuels.
“We have been working on this idea for one-and-a-half years, and we have hired a team, working with RCT Technologies from Germany for its expertise in setting up solar cell manufacturing. We eventually plan to participate in the solar production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme too,” Nandan said.
Asked whether the ongoing phase of consolidation in the solar power sector makes it the right time to commit investment, Nandan said the government has launched many programmes to promote domestic manufacturing in solar, including the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM), which provides hope.