candi solar

Debt : July 2024

BIO has granted a USD 9M loan to candi solar, a company installing, owning and operating solar production plants and selling electricity to clients in India and South Africa.

Amount

$ 9,000,000.00

Type of investment

Debt

Development impacts

Local economic growth
Fight against climate change

Beneficiary locations

Africa: South Africa

Asia: India

Investment field

Infrastructure

Activity

DD.35.113 Production of electricity: solar

Organisation

candi solar

Website

http://candi.solar

Domicile

Netherlands

More investments in

candi solar

Debt € 6,180,468.00 (2023)
Subsidy € 15,203.00 (2022-2022)
Debt € 4,074,650.00 (2021)

candi’s core strategy is to serve SMEs that need reliable and affordable energy but prefer to focus their resources on their core business and outsource the financing and management of a solar plant.

Solar plants are generally installed on rooftops and have an average size of 1.1MW in India (3/4 of portfolio) and 585kW in SA (1/4).To unlock this market overlooked by most players, candi aims to reach high volumes, compress transaction costs, leverage its fundraising expertise and rely on state-of-the-art proprietary credit analysis and monitoring tools to minimize risks.

Development impacts

Local economic growth
Increase access to renewable energy for SME clients in India and South Africa where grids are exposed to instability – through solar panel solutions that are more reliable and at a fixed and lower price, thereby reducing uncertainty of grid price evolution, contributing to render green energy financially sustainable, and ultimately fostering local economic growth.
Fight against climate change
Funding an increase of the renewable energy capacity in the target countries and reduce client-SMEs energy dependency on the national (mostly fossil fuels-based i.e. coal and oil) grids, increasing the share of RE in the energy mix and avoiding an extra ~107,070 tCO2 per year.

E&S Impact

BIO and candi agreed to strengthen the company’s E&S practices via an additional effort in terms of formalisation, data collection and recording system. candi will hire a junior ESG person to support this change. In parallel, candi will develop an end-of-life strategy for when panels are decommissioned, and will formalize its land acquisition procedure for wheeling projects

Situation at the time of investment

candi has a comprehensive set of policies and procedures in place, implemented by a team of three people. candi verifies the alignment of off-takers' activity with the EDFI exclusion list and verifies that EPC contractors adopt the required OHS practices to avoid safety hazards. Finally, candi keeps track of its PV suppliers via a semestrial risk mapping exercise

Risk Category: B+

Read impact and news about this project

News

Investment in candi solar

22-02-2022

responsAbility Investments, the Swiss impact investment manager, and BIO, the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries, have provided a USD 10 million equivalent multi-currency loan to candi solar, a visionary financial and clean energy platform through which distributed energy infrastructure in emerging markets can be built at scale.