Agencies
Beijing
India has outpaced China as a destination for clean technology funding in recent months, as efforts to boost domestic green manufacturing help attractinvestors.
Deals worth about $2.4 billion were completed in the third quarter, more than four times the value of those in China and the second-highest total globally behind the US, data compiled by BloombergNEF show.
The momentum is being driven by India’s push to build out local clean energy capacity to limit reliance on China, and the prospects of becoming an exporter of the technologies, said Raj Pai, founding partner of GEF Capital Partners, a climate-focused privateequity fund.
“The attractiveness of the climate sector for both public and private capital is very high,” he said.
A series of policy initiatives from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is boosting the clean energy sector in particular, and India is likely to see the fastest rate of expansion of renewables among major economies through the rest of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency.
More than a dozen renewables and electric vehicle firms have publicly listed this year, including solar panel producer Waaree Energies and scooter manufacturer Ola Electric Mobility. Shares in clean power firm NTPC Green Energy have advanced more than 30percent since they began trading last month.
“Climate is the hottest topic for venture capital right now” in India, said Abhinav Sinha, head of technology and telecoms at British International Investment, the UK government’s development-finance arm. BII, which has invested more in India than in any other country, has committed to deploy at least $1 billion in the nation on climate-related projects by 2026.
About a quarter of all seed stage investments in India by venture capital groups are currently being made into climate-related startups, Sinha said.
Though India rivaled China for green technology funding in the third quarter, the $3.6 billion raised this year lags behind China’s total of $5.6 billion, BNEF data shows.
