Solar Financing Platform Aerem Raises $2.5 Mn Led by Blume Ventures – EQ Mag Pro
Solar financing platform Aerem has raised $2.5million in pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures. Aerem is pioneering a full-stack solution with a vision to build India’s first asset finance and quality platform for solar.
The capital raised will be used for growing the loan book, building out the tech platform that would enable end to end digital and seamless interaction with various stakeholders and to hire teams including leadership in technology, product, finance, and operations.
Aerem’s platform innovatively addresses key points of friction hindering adoption of rooftop solar for MSMEs. The startup services a massive and highly scalable space and is future ready for the evolving and unfolding sustainability era.
By nature of its business, Aerem has a huge impact on mitigating carbon emissions and also leads to increased profitability of MSMEs, making them more competitive. Aerem plugs a glaring product gap that is preventing mass adoption of solar rooftops and works with solar installers and EPC companies by helping finance their solar customers leading to increase in their business and employment potential.
Aerem was founded in 2021 by Anand Jain who comes with a strong background in both financial services and solar. An MBA from Yale University, he worked as an investment banker with Lehman Brothers in New York before returning to India in 2009 to pursue his passion for solar. Aerem team brings on board deep domain expertise in both finance and solar and is best placed to enable and scale the sector.
Anand Jain, Founder, Aerem, said, “Aerem is on a mission to democratize the adoption of rooftop solar and build a better, greener and sustainable future. Our innovative SolarTech platform includes AAA (Aerem Asset Assurance) ensures quality rooftop solar systems, which combined with financing from our in-house NBFC or partner banks enable significant reduction in power bills of MSMEs. We offer a fully digitalized, hassle free and seamless experience to MSMEs.”
Ashish Fafadia, Partner, Blume Ventures, added, “We are impressed with Anand’s vision and Aerem’s platform approach that includes credit. Their full stack solution provides end to end engagement and is ahead of the market by 1-2 years. Solar is in a sweet spot where macro (top down) and micro (bottom up) factors are incredibly aligned. This is extremely rare for any sector. India has targeted 280 GW of solar capacity and 50% of its energy requirement from clean energy by 2030.”
Aerem is targeting 20mn industrial MSMEs in India. The market potential is over USD 200 billion just in the MSME space.