For an establishment to function properly, creativity is a priority but not all of it. The ability to conduct business is as much important. Only with the combination of the two can a company achieve sustainability in the market. Especially in the cleantech sector where challenges like quality control, affordability, awareness, product market fit and lack of government regulations still hold back its exponential growth; the need to have a calculated business plan is priority of any company. Sumit Kalra, a seasoned businessman and Rohit Arora, a shining engineering student greeted the union of their minds to form SolarOcta Energy Services in 2016 which is a Sustainability Development Oriented Startup that is working towards the integration of Clean technologies for products and services offered to domestic and commercial settings.

“Rohit paired a circuit with conventional twinkle lights available in the market. We sensed an urgency and right timing of Diwali 2016 to launch this as a high

quality product in India.designed a rugged ABS casing, waterproof product to be used in all weather conditions. Our first batch run was done via online Diwali sale on Amazon India and it was a huge success, this is what we needed as a boost to continue in the renewable sector and SolarOcta carried its operations of manufacturing this product for mass retail only via e-commerce with more and more colours and lengths of this string lights for consumer markets at different price ranges”, says Sumit Kalra, Co-Founder, SolarOcta.

The Growth Encountered
With productivity that reflected through and through, SolarOcta got recognised under the Startup India program and also a sustainability development enterprise under the MSME Government of India program. Moving on with the list of ac complishments, SolarOcta has become one of the first companies among the recognised vendors of the United Nations Global Market place(UNGM) to offer Sustainability oriented products and services under its umbrella by clean technology integrations. “Our approach is simple yet efficient, India witnesses more than 300+ days of 6 to 8 hrs sunshine. Rooftops across India are an under tapped resource for Sustainability development and to utilize this space just to harness solar energy via solar PV is inefficient. Thus, we have been able to penetrate this competitive Solar market in India by combining our Solar power systems with other clean technologies in vertical of water security(by STP/rain water

harvesting/submersible/ hydro storage),food security(hydroponics/soil based farming beneath these rooftop solar power plants in urban areas),waste security (recycle/composting and bio gas plants under the same canopy)”, says Rohit Arora, Co-Founder.

The Future Ahead
Revenue wise SolarOcta is net positive and currently generating enough profits for them to reinvest in their future goals. Apart from Rohit and Sumit, it has inhouse designing team which caters to the customisations of rooftop projects. The company also has an INC team for Delhi and also hires INC team for projects outside Delhi NCR. Expressing the road ahead for the company, the founders conclude, “SolarOcta has been gearing up for its next market offering in products and services catering to All Sustainability Needs. We are currently working on our portfolio of SolarOcta Canopy Rooftop installations and we are now empanelled vendor under Delhi Government scheme for Rooftop Solar PV installations which enables us to claim subsidised rates for our customers thus ensuring 3x growth in rooftops sector and learning and developing from customer feedbacks to reach more consumers. Our next goals are to install 1 MWp of CAPEX of Solar Rooftops of which 100 kWp and 200 kWp are already in pipeline with private consumer and Government respectively. We also aim for 5 MWp of RESCO of Solar Rooftop in Delhi NCR region by financial year 2019-20.”