Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) has signed definitive agreements to acquire a majority stake in SenseHawk Inc. for a total transaction value of $32 million, including funding for future growth, commercial rollout of products, and R&D.
Founded in 2018, 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 more than 140 customers in 15 countries adopt new technology for their over 600 sites and assets totaling more than 100 GW.
“We welcome SenseHawk and its dynamic team to our family,” says Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman and managing director of RIL. “RIL is committed to revolutionize the Green Energy sector and has a vision to enable 100 GW of solar energy by 2030. 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.”
SenseHawk’s Solar Digital Platform offers end-to-end management of solar asset lifecycles, including pre-construction evaluation and process optimization, construction management, and operations and maintenance. Teams work off of the same map-based tasks, with access to all required data mapped to a digital twin, significantly improving new site ramp up. Customers save time and effort with preventive maintenance schedules, alarm handling and performance visualization.
“Rahul Sankhe, Karthik Mekala, Saideep Talari, Viral Patel and I collaborated with a vision to impact all of the processes in the solar lifecycle,” adds Swarup Mavanoor, CEO and co-founder of SenseHawk. “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.”
“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,” adds Rahul Sankhe, SenseHawk’s president and co-founder. “We are on a mission to improve the solar energy ecosystem, acquiring 50% of the market by 2025 and with RIL as our partner, we will accelerate on our execution toward that goal.”
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.
