As India’s solar sector transitions from rapid capacity expansion to a stronger focus on long-term performance and asset optimisation, the role of operations and maintenance has never been more critical. While new installations continue to grow, ensuring that solar assets consistently deliver peak performance over their 25-year lifecycle remains one of the industry’s most significant challenges.
Mr Anandaraj Rajakumar, Co-Founder and Director – Operations at Inspire Clean Energy, has dedicated his career to addressing this very challenge. With over two decades of experience spanning the oil and gas, process, chemical, and solar industries across India, Italy, Mexico, and South America, he brings a unique blend of engineering expertise, operational discipline, and entrepreneurial vision to the renewable energy sector.
Recognising early on that many solar assets were underperforming due to inadequate operational oversight and the lack of data-driven decision-making, he co-founded Inspire Clean Energy in 2015 with a clear mission: to transform solar plants from one-time projects into high-performing, long-term assets. Under his leadership, the company has grown into one of India’s leading solar asset management and O&M specialists, managing over 1.6 GWp of solar capacity across multiple states. The development of proprietary platforms such as Eira and the launch of Xenectra’s field robotics solutions further reflect his commitment to combining technology, automation, and operational excellence to maximise renewable energy performance.
In this conversation with Renew Edge, Mr Rajakumar shares his perspectives on solar asset optimisation, decentralised energy adoption, the evolving role of technology in operations, and the future of performance-driven renewable energy management in India.
What inspired you to co-found Inspire Clean Energy, and what gap in the market were you aiming to address?
Early in my career, one pattern bothered me. A lot of attention went into building solar plants, and very little into keeping them performing year after year. Once commissioning was done, many assets were left running with minimal oversight. I came from the oil & gas and process industries, where an asset is treated as a long-term operating business, not a one-time project, and that discipline was missing in solar. That is what led us to start Inspire Clean Energy in 2015. Even today, I believe the real value of a solar plant is not in how fast it goes up, but in how well it performs over its lifetime.
As a founder, how has your leadership evolved while scaling a clean energy business in a dynamic market?
When we started, I was involved in almost every decision myself. That works for a while, but it does not scale. The biggest change for me has been learning to step back from doing the work and focus on setting the standard, then trusting a strong team to deliver against it. We brought in people who own their outcomes and moved to running the business on data rather than instinct - live dashboards, generation reports, and site-level numbers everyone can see. My role today is to keep the bar high, make accountability clear, and give good people the room to do their best work.
How do you view the current evolution of India’s clean energy sector, particularly at the distributed and commercial levels?
The first wave in India was about utility-scale capacity, and policy did its job in getting that built. What excites me now is the shift towards the commercial, industrial, and distributed side. Businesses no longer want to be passive consumers of grid power; they want control over both cost and carbon footprint. The hard problem has changed as well. Generation itself is no longer the challenge; reliable performance and grid integration are. As a sector, we are moving the conversation from how much we can build to how well what we have built actually performs. That is a healthy and necessary shift.
Where does Inspire Clean Energy position itself within this increasingly competitive ecosystem?
We see ourselves as a long-term performance partner, not just an O&M contractor. Today, we manage over 1.6 GWp of solar assets across multiple states. What makes us different is that we have built the full capability in-house. We have our own software platform, Eira, to monitor assets and guide decisions, and our own field-robotics vertical, Xenectra, which has developed a module-cleaning bot, a grass-cutting solution, and a design-patented Anti-Theft Clamp. Many companies do either the software or the field work. We do both, because in the end, we hold ourselves accountable for one thing: how much the plant actually generates.
What are your key business priorities over the next 3 years?
Three priorities are clear in my mind. First, to grow our assets under management thoughtfully, with the right clients rather than simply more of them. Second, to keep strengthening Eira and Xenectra so that performance remains consistent as we expand across more geographies. Third, to build a team and processes strong enough that multi-site delivery does not depend on me being involved in every decision.
Running through all of this is a steady focus on winning and retaining larger commercial and industrial clients - those who value long-term performance over the lowest quote.
What are the biggest execution challenges in delivering clean energy solutions at scale?
For me, it comes down to people and consistency. Our sites are spread across several states, and skilled field manpower is genuinely the hardest part to get right. The discipline that protects generation - cleaning cycles, response times, uptime, and SLA compliance - has to be exactly the same at a remote site in Rajasthan as at one in Maharashtra. You cannot let quality depend on who happened to turn up that morning. We address this through standardised processes, field automation, and strong site-level data, so the same standards are maintained everywhere, and nothing quietly slips through.
How are integrated solutions - such as solar, storage, and energy optimisation - reshaping customer expectations today?
Customer expectations have changed significantly. People no longer think they are buying panels; they are buying a guaranteed outcome and a single point of accountability. Once you combine solar, storage, and active energy management, the conversation shifts from equipment specifications to units delivered and uptime. I think that is good for the industry, but it raises the bar on operators like us. The promise can no longer be that we installed it well; it has to be that we will keep it performing for years. That is the standard we have chosen to hold ourselves to.
How effectively are current policies supporting clean energy adoption, and where do you see gaps?
Policy in India has done a lot of the heavy lifting on getting capacity built. Clear targets, incentives, and open access frameworks deserve credit for driving adoption. Where I see gaps is in everything that happens after commissioning. Long-term performance and O&M quality receive very little attention; accountability for underperforming assets is weak; and rules around net metering and open access still vary from state to state, creating uncertainty for commercial buyers. At this stage of the journey, I believe stable, well-enforced rules would do more for the sector than another round of fresh incentives.
What is driving the shift towards decentralised energy solutions among commercial and industrial consumers?
A few forces are coming together. The first is cost certainty - grid tariffs keep changing, while a captive solar plant fixes a large part of your energy cost for twenty-five years. The second is energy security, with businesses increasingly wanting greater control over their own supply. The third is growing pressure from customers and boards to reduce carbon emissions. What I find interesting is how quickly adoption spreads. Once one plant in a sector proves the model works, others follow. For most industrial buyers, this has shifted from being a sustainability initiative to a straightforward financial and operational decision.
How do you approach delivering long-term value and ROI assurance to customers in this space?
Let me be clear first - nobody should have to wait twenty-five years to see a return, and we do not ask them to. For most commercial and industrial customers, payback comes early in the asset’s life. My point is that payback is only the beginning. The plant continues generating value for two decades after it has paid for itself, and that long tail is where most of the return sits. It is also the part that quietly disappears if the asset is not properly maintained. A few per cent of soiling loss or avoidable downtime, year after year, can make a significant dent in lifetime returns.
Our job is to protect the return that comes after payback. We manage generation actively every day, and through Eira, the customer sees the same performance data we do, so there is complete transparency. Our contracts also put us on the hook through clear service levels and penalties when we fall short. To me, that is the honest way to look at ROI: achieve payback quickly, then protect every unit generated for the next twenty years.
Which segments or use cases do you see as the next big growth drivers in clean energy?
The commercial and industrial captive market is the most obvious one - it remains largely untapped in India. Close behind is the shift from standalone solar to firm, round-the-clock renewable power through the integration of solar, storage, and increasingly wind, making supply more dispatchable and less intermittent.
That shift also brings the grid interface - forecasting, scheduling, and compliance with CTU and STU requirements - much closer to the operator’s role. The growth driver people often overlook, however, is the services and performance layer itself. There are already gigawatts of solar assets on the ground that are not being managed effectively. Improving generation, uptime, field automation, and grid-side performance for that installed base is a significant market in its own right, and it is the direction we are building towards.
What is your message to policymakers, industry leaders, and businesses looking to accelerate their clean energy transition?
To policymakers, I would say that stable, well-enforced rules will take us further than new incentives, and that we should reward performance, not just installation. To the industry, my message is to build for twenty-five years, not for commissioning day. The reputation of the entire sector depends on assets that continue to perform over their full life. And to businesses still weighing the decision: the technology question is settled, so the honest advice is to start. Just choose a partner who is willing to own the outcome alongside you, rather than one who simply offers the lowest price.