They
have set out to bring in a change in the way Industries and Commercial
establishments meet their energy requirements. While generating revenue
with the business model, the endeavor is to reduce India’s crude oil
bill to the most possible extent.
Persept Solar is an Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore / NSRCEL incubated Independent Power Producing [IPP] company offering ”Solar PV Power as a Service”. The green power from renewable energy source offered by Persept Solar aims to reduce the dependence on the expensive captive diesel power plants used by Indian Industries, Commercial Establishments due to the ever-increasing power requirements.
Persept Solar has been in business for almost 2 and a half years. It was founded by two IIMB Alumni, with the firm belief that Solar Power can address a significant part of the existing demand-supply gap in the country.
We recently had a brief interactive session with the core team comprising Mr. Srinivas Ramprasad and Wg. Cdr. (Retd.) Rajendra Prasad. Below are the excerpts from the interaction
'How did the idea for your business come about?
While we were on a study tour at ESCP Madrid, one of our professors discussed the concept in our class. For a really long time, we were looking to do something meaningful in life but our ideas were not shaping up we wanted to do something different after working for nearly 23 years in our respective organizations. The idea was quite appealing as this has a tinge of social service and the market was a blue ocean.
What
have been some of your challenges/failures, and what have you learned from
them?
A common denominator for all entrepreneurs is the challenge of starting a business, be it through inventing something, looking for a new idea within a business, finding the right opportunity to break into a business or buying into a franchise. And all of these take planning - organizing all the aspects so that you reach your goals. All entrepreneurs are also faced with financing their entrepreneurial venture.
2 biggest challenges that we faced during setting up a business were Funding and Policies.
Since our business model does not exactly fit into the social entrepreneurship category we could not avail clean tech funding which is available. The infrastructure funds expectation was quite high and Bangalore did not have a strong ecosystem for business other than IT and ITES. It was frustrating to get the funding as banks are also not coming forward for a non-recourse loan. Finally, we had to approach to HNI for a couple of projects. Right now we are in talks with a US-based company for funding. We had initially based our business model utilizing government subsidy and assistance. There are many uncertain times which tend to be very tedious and tiring. We had lost a 5 MWp solar plant proposal (A huge proposal from the perspective of a startup company) due to the sudden change in policy. Though it is virtually impossible not to get affected by policies, now we are creating projects which are self-sustaining and do not get impacted by the policy changes greatly.
Getting an office space also was a tedious job but with Golden Square’s plug and play office options located at a prime location, we could concentrate more on the business than spending time maintaining our office. Apart from office space, Golden Square provided us with secretarial services, conference room and a team of courteous and responsive staff that impacts our overall functioning of business in a big way.
What
is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
Creativity, Freedom, Tackling Challenges, Self-growth, and discipline.
Do
you have any advice/suggestion for budding entrepreneurs?
Acquire how much ever knowledge you can, preferably work for some time in the relevant organization. Try to be creative and solution oriented when making crucial decisions and more importantly ethical. One should be mentally tough and physically fit to meet day to day challenges and last but not the least Perseverance is the key. Perseverance is undoubtedly an important aspect of successful entrepreneurship.
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