The United States Agency for international development (USAID) and US international Development Finance Corporation (DFC) are jointly sponsoring loans worth $41 million to finance loans to Indian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for renewable energy, including rooftop solar projects..
USAID and DFC have partnered with New York-based Encourage Capital and two Indian non-banking financial companies, cKers Financial and Electronica Finance Ltd (EFL) for this initiative. Encourage Capital has invested $15 million in EFL using USAID-DFC loan portfolio guarantee to stimulate the rooftop solar market, which represents a $9 billion market opportunity for SMEs. According to USAID, investments in solar solutions secured by credit guarantees will improve access to clean, steady and affordable energy as well as further progress towards India’s clean energy transition and climate change mitigation.