| Shival Garg – Business Head, Patanjali Renewable tells Clean Future about how Patanjali plan to be “India’s Most Preferred Brand” in renewable space. |
What prompted Patanjali to set up a new business vertical, Patanjali Renewables?
“Getting into solar power is in line with the swadeshi movement. With solar power, each household in India can have a power supply at very low rates, and we are here to make that happen.” Acharya Balkrishna, Managing Director, Patanjali Ayurveda Limited.
70 years of Independence and still more than 15% of our population is without electricity.We want to fulfill the daily electricity needs of the rural /urban areas in the country by providing affordable sustainable energy .
Tell us about your product offerings?
We have made a basket of the most widely accepted products in the most affordable price bracket. Our product range includes:
- Solar PV panels ( 5 WP- 335 WP)
- Batteries
- Solar Batteries (40ah-200ah)
- Inverter Batteries
- Inverters
- Off Grid PWM
- Off Grid MPPT
- On Grid( Grid Tie Inverters)
- Hybrid Inverters
- Solar Street lights
- Integrated
- Semi Integrated
- Soon we will be venturing into Solar Water Pumps as well, to cater to the needs of the farmers.
The country has set an ambitious target for the adoption of renewable energy in recent times, since then there have been some hits and some misses, how would you assess the Indian market?
Indian market is majorly a price driven market be it any field. Things start to pace up when prices go down. In the recent years, with the support of the Indian government through their policies, projects & strategies, India has jumped much higher in the ranks of Renewable Energy Sector.
There were and still are few roadblocks ahead of us in terms of subsidies, net metering policies, losses in electricity transmissions and majorly lack of financial support.
We believe that the proposals put forth in the current budget will triple the renewable energy market size and will also further increase the foreign direct investments.
How would you describe the market in terms of competition and what market-share are you targeting to achieve in a year’s time?
Competition is fierce in every field, including renewable energy sector. However we feel there is room for everyone.
India is a price sensitive market; there is a massive competition when it comes to pricing in this sector per se. Within a span of 3 years India has become the world’s cheapest solar producer that happened to due competition.
We are not focusing on any numbers for now; rather are focusing on reaching out to the remotest areas and provide people with affordable- sustainable energy.
You expect major chunk of revenue from C&I or residential rooftop solar segment?
Our approach will be to cater to both the segments simultaneously, but residential rooftop solar segment comes with more challenges like space constraints, lack of awareness about solar, financial freedom, etc.
We plan to set up different teams that will independently cater to corporate, institutional and residential segments.
The upfront cost of solar adoption is still high; Do you provide some kind of financial assistance for the same?
For now we don’t have any such model, but later we might make some plans to provide a basic financial support to our customers.
What is your unique selling proposition?
Our only proposition is to maintain the trust that people have on our brand with respect to quality and pricing. We would like to sustain our “India’s Most Preferred Brand “tagline for years to come.
After sales support is key for survival in consumer market, what kind of support do you offer on your products in terms of warranty, replacement, repair etc.?
A team of trained service professionals have been set up , who will be present in every state to look after the complaints. Apart from that we are on the verge of developing an application that would facilitate a “digital warranty” ( a paper less warranty) .
This will be based on QR codes, which will ease the job of the customer in case he/she misplaces his warranty card, as in cases of PV Panels the warranty period is around 25 years.
The customer just needs to download the app and scan the QR code on the box of the product. This will have following features:
- It is based on crypto currency based algorithm, so the customer can be sure that it’s a genuine product.
- He gets a digital warranty on his phone.
- He can get latest updates about our product offerings and schemes through this app.
What is your distribution strategy and ‘go-to-market’ plans to achieve your desired goals?
Setting up a core distribution network is our top priority. There are 725 districts in India and we are planning to assign distributors in each of these district.
Our distributors will be named as“Urja Kendras”, these will be a distribution cum service hub for all our products in that particular district.
There will be at least 1 service boy under every distributor who shall be trained by our technical team. This will help us to give door to door service and a T.A.T of 48-72 hrs .
We are planning to deploy a ground sales team of around 500 in the coming 2 years that will be divided in 2 teams: NBD & CRR.
- NBD (New Business Development) team will develop new markets & new dealers.
- CRR (Customer Retention n Repeat ) team will focus on the existing distributors and bring repetitive orders.
Plus a separate state wise sales team for bringing Commercial, Institutional & Residential rooftop orders.
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