Friday, November 22

SoftBank Corp. To Invest Billions In Indian Solar Power Project

Japanese holding company, Softbank Group Corporation is determined to invest funds amounting to $60 billion to $100 billion in a solar power project in India.

According to the reports, the funds being invested in the project are supposedly raised by the Softbank from the Saudi Arabia’s government. Saudi Arabia is the biggest investor in the Softbank’s Vision Fund, which was backed by an amount of $93 billion last year.

After all the arrangements and preparations for the deal are done, both the parties that are Softbank and Indian government will make an official announcement for the same.

Softbank was initially started as a telecom firm but it now has handed in a number of different areas, including e-commerce, finance, broadband, marketing, and more. The company has taken on an aggressive investment campaign in many startups and projects that seem to have a potential.

Three years ago in 2015, Softbank Group had promised to invest in Indian solar power projects an amount of $20 billion. The aim of the whole project was to generate 20 gigawatts (GW) of energy. Softbank planned to take the deal forward as the majority partner in a joint venture with India’s Bharti Enterprises and Taiwan’s Foxconn. Further, in April, SoftBank joined hands with China’s GCL System Integration Technology Co Ltd on an Indian solar energy venture worth $930 million.

Softbank has a good experience with solar energy projects as it earlier has invested in the world’s largest solar project in Saudi Arabia. India is quite ambitious to set up and achieve an operational solar power capacity of 100 GW by the end of the year 2022 that is five times more than the present state under the renewable energy strategy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.