Reliance to acquire majority stake in US solar technology firm SenseHawk
13 Sep 2022
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Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Monday signed definitive agreements to acquire a majority stake in SenseHawk Inc, a US-based solar system automation company, for a total transaction value of $32 million, including funding for future growth, commercial rollout of products, and R&D.
Founded in 2018, California-based SenseHawk is an early-stage developer of software-based management tools for the solar energy generation industry.
SenseHawk helps accelerate solar projects from planning to production by helping companies streamline processes and use automation.
SenseHawk has helped over 140 customers in 15 countries adopt new technology for more than 600 sites and assets totalling 100 GW according to a RIL release,.
SenseHawk’s Solar Digital Platform offers end-to-end management of solar asset lifecycles. It offers services like pre-construction evaluation and process optimisation, providing a platform approach that enables unification of multiple processes and data into a single GIS supported view for dashboarding, land data management, design option management, BOQs, approvals etc.
Combined with the map view, chat, and digital forms, the SDP provides improved communications between project teams, enabling early issue detection and onsite resolution, automated progress reports, connects engineering drawings and schems to components on site and accelerates processes.
SenseHawk brings all stakeholders to a single interface.
SenseHawk, along with RIL’s other investments in New Energy, will be synergistic and create unique solutions with higher value to customers, says the release.
“In collaboration with SenseHawk, we will drive down costs, enhance productivity and improve on-time performance to deliver the lowest LCoE for solar projects globally and make solar energy the go-to source of power in lockstep with our vision for solar energy. It is a very exciting technology platform and I am confident that, with RIL’s support, SenseHawk will grow multifold,” Mukesh D Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Limited, said.
“Rahul Sankhe, Karthik Mekala, Saideep Talari, Viral Patel and I collaborated with a vision to impact all of the processes in the solar lifecycle. We are delighted with the confidence that RIL has demonstrated in us with this investment. The SenseHawk team foresees strategic value in working with RIL, as one of the largest global
infrastructure corporations, and look forward to this next phase in our growth,” Swarup avanoor, CEO and co-founder, SenseHawk, said,
“I second Swarup’s feelings and believe this partnership will open new use cases, help our nascent markets, and offer higher value to customers across the solar lifecycle. We are on a mission to improve the solar energy ecosystem, acquiring 50 per cent of the market by 2025 and with RIL as our partner, we will accelerate on our execution toward that goal,” Rahul Sankhe, president and co-founder, SenseHawk, added.
The transaction is subject to certain regulatory and other customary closing conditions and is expected to complete before end 2022.
Covington & Burling LLP and Khaitan & Co. acted as the legal advisors and Deloitte as the accounting and tax advisor to RIL on this transaction.
