Shining Bright

The solar company is making the most of India Inc’s push for sustainability.

- Monica Bathija

About four years after Kuldeep Jain had set up CleanMax Enviro Energy Solutions in 2011, the head of sustainability of one of its largest clients—a data centre service provider— told them that CleanMax had had a negligible impact on the company’s sustainability agenda.

CleanMax Enviro, which operates under the brand name CleanMax Solar, had until then been setting up solar rooftop plants for companies on an operating expenditure model: CleanMax invested in, built and maintained the plant on a company property while the latter paid for the electricity consumed. The model had been arrived at because companies usually did not want to expend capital towards non-core functions. This way, clients could meet their sustainability goals as well as save on energy costs. “My ambition was to make it impossible for people to say no to green,” says Jain, 44, founder and MD.

Data centres are huge consumers of power and the solution to provide more power—and thus have them offset a larger carbon footprint— would be to set up a plant offsite. Says Jain, “I told the client that I’m not sure as a company how to buy a lot of land, evacuate the power, deal with farmers and so on. And the client told me, ‘Look, you have to figure out if you are in the business of meeting a client need, or if you are in the business of not buying land’.”