Freyr Energy Pvt Ltd, announcing the launch of SunPro+ mobile app.

This is a revolutionary app that makes the customer learn more about solar and get a quotation, place an order, track system installation, and monitor system performance under one app.

And kindly find below the note of the press briefing.

We would appreciate if you could carry the same.

About Freyr Energy

• Freyr Energy started in 2014 with goal to provide world class solar solutions to homeowners and businesses
• In the last six years, designed and installed over 1500 systems across 22 states in India across residential, commercial and government projects.
• Averaging, every-one and a half days, we have been setting up one solar installation
• By market share, we are now one of the top 25 solar companies in India
• Empanelled in several states to offer subsidies to residential customers (subsidy range is from 20% to 40% depending on the size of the system and which part of the country you’re in)
• Work done with various power distribution companies across the country - Indian Oil Corporation, one of India’s defence sector companies in solarizing the submarine manufacturing facility

Sunpro+

• Probably the only app in the world which covers the entire journey from installation to monitor the performance for 25 years of the system’s life.
• The new Sunpro+ app can cater to across country, at time we have enquiries pipeline ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 enquiries. The app would provide similar service to people from any geography with a uniform experience. The usual age of the solar installation is 25 years hence this app would provide a continuous monitoring of your system.
• People hear about large solar project inaugurations but are not aware of how they can easily install for their use in a convenient manner, such app would help them to understand the process at a single place.
• The app can be sued by anyone, be it residential, commercial who wants to transition from conventional to solar and save significant power costs with one-time investment.

Need for Sunpro+

• Most customers can get upto 90% reduction in electricity bills, for every 1 lac rupees invested, most of our customers see an annual savings of Rs. 30,000 or more (30% return on investment)
• Solar is a 100% clean source of power and the system lasts for 25 years.
• Most customers face a lot of challenges to transition to solar today.
• Relevant and accurate information is not available in one place
• Then there are a lot of hidden costs and lack of transparency. A lot of that comes up because either the customers don’t ask the questions or a lot of the companies don’t want to provide all of the relevant information systematically to the customers.
• Once a customer decides to go solar, they end up having to deal with multiple entities through the solar journey. What I mean by that is, one company sells the system, a couple of companies are involved in supplying all the components. Then a fourth company is involved in the installation.

Lockdown impact

• April 15 onwards, Freyr started operating as Solar was considered as an essential service. Opened office from May 3 and then step by step work process came on track, 1^st month faced supply chain, logistics issues

Business impact

• Started witnessing more demand as Work from Home started and electricity bills of people shot up due to AC, and other gadgets getting used. That led to more demand from that customer segment, started seeing demand from commercial industry also as companies are planning to bring down operations costs

Financials

• The company is on the track to do more business than last year; This Q1 targets were met and business was almost same as it was in Q1 FY 2020 however achieved in 6 weeks of the permissible work due to lockdown. Focusing on achieving targets for rest of the year in disciplined manner, focusing on cash flows, operations; one of the few companies which is hiring in the current scenario also

Market share

• There are a few thousand companies (big or small) in various segments of the Solar business. Currently we have between 0.3% to 0.4% of the overall market share (please note that market is very fragmented and the largest player has 4% which was 2% a year before).

Competition

• Freyr’s competitors depend upon the kind of customers – commercial sector with projects of INR 50lacs+, then at national level we compete with TATA power, Fourth Partner to name a few. In residential or Small businesses then the competition is more of regional players with Freyr being the only national player. In the residential and small-scale commercial businesses side, we will be in the top 5 players at national level. 

Industry trend

• Utility solar business is more or less on track as per the target set by the govt. On Rooftop segment, the installed capacity in the last 3-4 years is growing by 1 to 1.5 GW each year equivalent roughly to a few Billion dollar. Its growing between 20 – 40% on a yearly basis which is decent. However, if we compare with the aggressive govt target of 40GW of rooftop solar installation by 2022, then the country is at 10% of that as of now. With around 30% return on investment each year, it’s a beneficial value preposition for people which will induce demand.

Funding requirement

• Adequately funded currently as we reached a place where we have better payment terms with the customers as well as from suppliers that helps us in our funding requirements. We also received the govt assistance for MSME in March and May so if we maintain the financial discipline then money shouldn’t be a problem. Transparency in SunPro+ also gives the confidence to the customers.

Breakup of business

• Residential for us is 10 to 15% of our overall business. And the rest is commercial and industrial. Just to clarify that around 10% of our business is government related.

Current Presence and expansion

• We are Hyderabad based company so sometimes in people mind the local geographic associations becomes. We have presence and customers across 22 states today. There are definitely some states that get us more business in and some other states where it’s not that active yet. But overall its 22 states we are operating out of. I want to highlight is in India, you have close to 3,000 cities and towns, especially in the current environment how do you reach out to all these customers prospective customers were looking at this option? And so that is where with the customer app, we are able to give uniform experience to anyone across the country in terms of their information gathering or being able to answer ask and get their questions answered or be able to you place an order for a system and everything else. So and then where we differentiate ourselves is we are able to support supplement that with our on-the-ground network of sales team and channel partners who sell systems on our behalf as in when the customer requires wants to talk to someone physically meet somebody to understand a few things. We are able to then address that particular requirement by having our sales team or channel partners visit these customers talk to them, etc. SO that’s how these I have though about this and build this company out on that particular platform over the last few years.

Subsidies impact

• As a company if subsidies available, definitely for the customer it becomes one more point that sort of catalyzes their decision making process to transition to solar right. Subsidies where it becomes a little bit cumbersome, it delays the decision-making of subsidies then not available. There are the states there are delay in decision making by six months or nine months or whatever it is, still the subsidy comes up in my state that becomes a challenge. But subsidies were more essential for residential segment, may be two years ago. Why, because the residential tariff tends to be about, 20% to 30% lower than commercial and industrial tariffs. You needed that extra incentive push, right? But now with where the solar prices are on a standalone basis, even where our residential customers mostly up being INR 6 rupees per unit for everyone. They are investing even residential customers see savings of INR 20 rupees or more annually. So I think what we will see is probably subsidies going away in a year or two. That’s what our expectation is.

Servicing in different states and consolidation

• Freyr is one of those few companies that are empanelled across multiple states including Delhi to offer subsidies to customers. So, on the residential side, I think, over time you will see some kind of consolidation but that also comes from customer awareness. So if customers are able to see for example, there is the SunPro+ app and there is this company and they are doing this in a manner that makes sense to me. Then, I am going to reach out to them, engage with them and go with them. Like us I think there are a few national players. If you look at the US market, they do about 15 Gigawatts of rooftop solar installations every year. 30% to 40% of that market is split across maybe 10 companies and you still have 60% of that market, mostly spread between small and medium sized players local or regionals. So in India, I think over the next few years that is basically where we will see these thing headed all. Because at the end of the day, you know the barriers to entry for an EPC company in a rooftop solar market is where are very low. I think that you will see consolidation but not to the tune of what you see or what people are used to in the e-commerce sector or one of these other sectors where its caps for example where it is going to be just two players and nobody else that is not how this sector will play out. It is not how it is played out anywhere in the world.

Local equipment

• If we look at cumulatively across all our segments since 2014, we have used domestic modules for more than 80% of our installations and the only places where we didn’t use a domestically made modules was when the customer insisted that they wanted a particular foreign company to supply the modules, even now we follow the same thing. There are a few good Indian companies that are in the Bloomberg index of the top 30 solar companies in the world for modules. From a quality perspective or a technology perspective, there is absolutely no difference and we found it to be much easier to use domestic modules the turnaround time for a customer is faster. I am able to execute the projects earlier if any support is required, the companies in India, its able to support it. So that for us will continue and so there are exposure if anything to international disruptions is more around cells not being available on time or something along those lines happening with some of our vendors. That’s on the module side on the inverter side I think we continue to use mostly international inverters. Make sure that they have a work or presence. In India because serviceability is going to be a big requirement for us. So inverter side, I think the domestic manufacturing is not there yet, but the module side, I see no reason for us to depend on non-Indian modules other than when a customer asks for it.