Odyssey Insights Series: Redefining trends in India's C&I renewable energy market

Beyond solar savings

Something has shifted in how serious businesses in India think about renewable energy. A few years ago, the conversation was almost entirely about the payback period on rooftop solar. 

Today, the companies we work with at Odyssey are asking different questions: Can we get firm, dispatchable power? Does our supply chain hold up under the new ALMM rules? Will our bank accept this project structure? That shift: from cost-saving exercise to strategic infrastructure decision, is what this piece is really about.

India's C&I renewable market is maturing fast. The market is already approaching ~40 GW of installed C&I renewable capacity and is projected to reach ~57 GW by FY2028. The policy architecture is more coherent than it gets credit for. And the mid-sized EPCs and OEMs who form the backbone of this sector, firms in that ₹100-1000 crore range, are the ones who will either capitalize on what's coming or get squeezed out by it. Despite the momentum, less than 10% of India’s C&I electricity demand is currently met through renewable energy.

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Here's what we're watching closely.

1. The compliance shift isn't going away:

The ALMM framework used to feel like a procurement nuisance. Now it's a market structure. What started with solar PV modules will extend into inverters, trackers, and BESS, and the upcoming ALMM-II mandate for solar cells (June 2026) is going to separate firms that built pre-qualified domestic supplier relationships from those still scrambling on a project-by-project basis.

There's a real competitive edge here for EPCs who get ahead of this. Lenders increasingly want ALMM-compliant supply chains before they sign off on financing. MNC off-takers want documentation. The firms that treat domestic sourcing as a baseline rather than a constraint are the ones building order books with far less friction.

2. BESS has crossed the threshold

We're past the point of treating battery storage as a premium add-on. LFP cell costs have fallen by more than 80% over the last decade, the government's VGF scheme (targeting 30 GWh of integrated capacity) is real money moving into the sector, and the C&I customers, especially in manufacturing and data infrastructure, are no longer satisfied with daytime-only solar. They want power when they need it. That expectation is accelerating particularly fast among manufacturers, logistics operators, and data centers where downtime has a direct operational cost.

The challenge for mid-sized EPCs is that BESS is technically demanding. Sizing, degradation modelling, warranty structuring, grid interface design, these aren't skills most EPC teams built during the rooftop solar boom. Firms that are investing in BESS engineering capability now, through partnerships or structured training, are building a moat. Those who aren't will find themselves locked out of an increasingly large segment of the market.

3. RTC power: A real niche for mid-market players

Round-the-Clock power has mostly been discussed in the context of large utility-scale projects, the kind that require massive balance sheets and years of development time. But there's a growing mid-market niche (call it the 20–50 MW range) where C&I buyers want the outcome of RTC power without the complexity of structuring it themselves.

This is an interesting space for mid-sized EPCs to occupy: not as developers of utility-scale assets, but as integrators and aggregators who can bring together wind, solar, and storage across consortium or SPV structures, particularly as India continues targeting roughly 50 GW of renewable energy tenders annually to stay on track for its 2030 ambitions. It requires a different commercial model and stronger technical coordination, but it's far more defensible than competing purely on EPC margin.

4. VPPAs: when geography stops being a constraint

Virtual Power Purchase Agreements are gaining traction among MNCs with RE100 commitments, particularly in geographies where land constraints or state-level policy make physical procurement complicated. The mechanism is straightforward: the corporate buyer gets the environmental attribute and price hedge; the physical power flows elsewhere on the grid.

What this means for EPCs is less obvious but important. To serve these clients, you're not just building assets, you're providing structured advisory, helping corporations account for Scope 2 reductions, and navigating financial instruments that most EPC teams have never touched. The firms building this capability are repositioning themselves as energy partners rather than contractors. That's a fundamentally different and more durable relationship.

5. VGF is a strategy, not a bonus

Too many mid-sized firms treat government support schemes as something to chase opportunistically. The better approach is to build an internal function, even a lightweight one, that systematically tracks scheme availability, application windows, and eligibility criteria. VGF, in particular, is becoming more targeted: the government is increasingly using it to reward domestic content and technological specificity, not just volume.

For a firm that is already ALMM-aligned and building BESS capability, VGF access becomes a real cost-of-capital advantage. In several states, open-access renewable procurement is already delivering 25–30% savings versus conventional industrial grid tariffs, making structured renewable procurement increasingly difficult for large energy users to ignore. It de-risks projects in ways that make them far more attractive to institutional lenders. That compounding effect — compliance plus technical credibility plus government support — is how mid-sized players punch above their weight financially.

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What this adds up to

These five trends aren't separate phenomena. They're expressions of the same underlying policy logic: India is deliberately raising the floor for participation in its energy transition, and it's doing so in ways that reward domestic capability, bankable technical standards, and long-term thinking.

That creates genuine difficulty for firms that built their business on speed and margin compression alone. Working capital cycles are tight. More than 50 GW of renewable projects across India are reportedly facing delays tied to transmission readiness, PPAs, and regulatory bottlenecks, a reminder that execution capability is becoming just as important as project origination. Land and grid connectivity remain hard problems. Tier-1 suppliers don't negotiate favourably with buyers who show up without leverage. And the technical demands of hybrid, storage-linked, and digitally managed assets are genuinely steep.

But for firms willing to adapt, to treat compliance as infrastructure, BESS as a core offering, and policy engagement as a commercial function, this is a strong market to be in. The volume is coming. India’s target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030 ensures that this is not a short-term policy cycle, but a structural industrial transition. The question is whether your business is built to capture it. 

At Odyssey, we work directly at the intersection of technology, finance, and project execution in this market. What we see consistently is that the companies gaining ground aren't the ones with the lowest cost structure. They're the ones who've made the right structural bets twelve months before everyone else caught up. That window is open right now. It won't be indefinitely.

Prashant Motwani 

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