New Delhi, April 16 -- British International Investment (BII), the UK's development financial institution, has doubled down on its exposure to the Indian smart metering space with Rs. 710 crore (close to $80 million) investment.
A little over five months after BII, along with Standard Chartered, invested $92 million (Rs. 800.9 crore) in smart metering company Aparava Energy, the British government backed investor, has now made a fresh investment in its peer, Polaris Smart Metering Pvt Ltd, the Indian smart metering platform of private equity firm I Squared Capital.
BII's latest investment will help Polaris deploy over 2.2 million smart meters in the state of West Bengal, where the company operates via a local subsidiary Hoogly Smart Metering Pvt Ltd.
VCCircle had first reported in June last year that Polaris was looking to bring on board one or more investors and raise fresh capital as it looks to expand its footprint in the country.
The new investment comes when the Jaipur-based company is competing with a bunch of suitors to acquire its peer Intellismart Infrastructure Ltd, which has been put on the block by the government-backed National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) and Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL).
India's power utilities have long struggled with high aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses and operational inefficiencies. The government is addressing these issues through the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), which includes a target to install 250 million smart meters nationwide by 2027. Polaris is one of several Advanced Metering Infrastructure Service Providers (AMISPs) participating in state-level projects under the RDSS framework.
Polaris, formerly known as Gram Power, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore based Polaris Smart Metering Pte Ltd. It was founded by Yashraj Khaitan in 2012. In February 2023, I Squared had entered the smart metering market by acquiring Gram Power in a $100 million deal.
Polaris provides end-to-end advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solutions, including meter manufacturing, deployment, communications and software platforms. The company holds an order book of approximately $1.1 billion covering about 7.5 million electric meters across Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Manipur. It has also deployed 1 million smart meters under the RDSS programme and is active in smart gas metering.
BII has been increasing its climate-related investments in India, recently surpassing $1 billion in commitments for the 2022-2026 period. Last October, it was in advanced discussions with a Gujarat-based renewable energy group to make a $200 million investment and, a few months before that in May, it had invested $100 million in ReNew Energy's Solar Manufacturing Unit.
Its Polaris investment comes as private players expand in India's smart metering sector, which has seen other recent investments.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.