Issue 24 | September 2020
Put Your Money Where the Sun Shines Hardik Bhatia, Co-Founder at SolarGridX, spoke with The Sustainabilist about the platform revolutionising investments in solar projects for individuals
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ell us about SolarGridX and its company mission. SolarGridX is a crowd-investing platform that lets people buy and sell fractional digital ownership in solar panels. Prices start at US $6 and earn up to 15% return on investment (ROI) from consumers, who use their funding to establish solar panels. Consumers enjoy free installation of solar panels. They pay per use of the panels, and can access cheaper and more sustainable energy than conventional sources. To provide an overview of our company, we sell a digital token, called an SGX, which represents the ownership of a fraction of a solar panel, one solar cell. Using investors’ capital, we use the funds to establish solar panels in India for consumers, and allow them to pay for what they use. We collect these proceeds, and distribute them to the investors in the SGX token. Solar panels have a high upfront installation cost, which can take eight years to break even. However, renewable technology needs to be implemented widely to avoid and reverse the impacts of climate change. To enable that, investments in renewables need 37
