Reliance Industries Limited to acquire majority stake in solar digitization platform SenseHawk

Mumbai, September 6, 2022

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said it had on Monday signed definitive agreements to acquire a majority stake in solar digitization platform SenseHawk Inc for a total transaction value of US$ 32 million, including funding for future growth, commercial rollout of products, and R&D.

Founded in 2018, SenseHawk is an early-stage California-based developer of softwarebased 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.

A press release from Reliance said SenseHawk had helped 140+ customers in 15 countries adopt new technology for their 600+ sites and assets totalling 100+ GW.

SenseHawk’s Solar Digital Platform offers end-to-end management of solar asset lifecycles, it said.

"Customers see value with SenseHawk in:

a) Pre-construction evaluation and process optimization: The platform approach enables unification of multiple processes and data into a single GIS supported view for dashboarding, land data management, design option management, BOQs, approvals and more.

b) Construction management: Combined with the map view, chat, and digital forms, the SDP provides improved communications between project teams enabling early issue detection and onsite resolution, automated progress reports, connects engineering drawings and schemas to components on site and accelerates processes.

c) Operations and maintenance: SenseHawk brings all stakeholders to a single interface," the release said.

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, it said.

The release said SenseHawk, along with RIL’s other investments in New Energy, would be synergistic and create unique solutions with higher value to customers.

Speaking about the acquisition, Mukesh D. Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited, said, “We welcome SenseHawk and its dynamic team to our family. 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.”

Swarup Mavanoor, CEO and co-founder, SenseHawk, said, “Rahul Sankhe, Karthik Mekala, Saideep Talari, Viral Patel and I collaborated with a vision to impact all of the processes in the solar lifecycle. 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.”

Rahul Sankhe, President and co-founder, SenseHawk, said, “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. 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, the release said.

Covington & Burling LLP and Khaitan & Co. acted as the legal advisers and Deloitte as the accounting and tax adviser to RIL on this transaction.

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