Solfin Sustainable Finance has closed a ₹280 crore funding round and achieved profitability within its first full year of operations, the green finance company announced on Wednesday. The combination is unusual for an early-stage non-banking financial company.
Founded in December 2022 by former American Express executives Gautam Kaushik and Pramod Mahanta, Solfin operates as a digital-first lending platform focused exclusively on clean-energy financing. The company is backed by Waaree Sustainable Finance, part of the Waaree Group, one of India’s larger renewable energy conglomerates.
The fresh capital will be directed towards AI-driven credit underwriting, portfolio monitoring, geographic expansion into underpenetrated states and new green-financing products. The company also plans to enter adjacent customer segments beyond its current focus.
Solfin says its proprietary underwriting technology has reduced residential solar loan approvals from weeks to days, and brought commercial and industrial financing turnarounds down to single-digit days. The platform currently works with more than 1,200 distribution partners including EPCs, dealers, OEMs and manufacturers.
The company’s growth comes against a supportive policy backdrop. The Indian government has set a target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2070. The PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana scheme has expanded the residential rooftop solar market, while rising commercial electricity tariffs are pushing businesses towards long-term energy cost certainty.
“India’s energy transition is the largest infrastructure opportunity of our generation, but it will only move at the speed of its financing,” said Kaushik and Mahanta in a joint statement.
Solfin says its model targets Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets where access to clean-energy financing has historically been limited, positioning distributed solar lending as its primary growth driver for the near term.