Bankrupt in USA, SunEdison may sell stake in India

"Given the liquidity crunch in our parent, we are exploring equity partnerships at a project level as well as a platform level in India," SunEdison India Pashupathy Gopalan said.

"Given the liquidity crunch in our parent, we are exploring equity partnerships at a project level as well as a platform level in India," SunEdison India Pashupathy Gopalan said. Pic: SunEdison India website

Facing liquidity crunch, renewable energy firm SunEdison India today said it is receiving a "lot of interest" from investors for possible stake sale in the company as well as in its projects in the country.

SunEdison India is a subsidiary of US-based energy major SunEdison, which last week filed for bankruptcy protection in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

"Given the liquidity crunch in our parent, we are exploring equity partnerships at a project level as well as a platform level in India," SunEdison India Pashupathy Gopalan told PTI when asked about the impact of the bankruptcy protection on the firm's Indian operations.

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He further said: "The filing of Chapter 11 in the US, will not affect our Indian operations where we plan to continue normal course of business."

In the last six years, SunEdison India has built nearly 700 MW of operational power plants and currently have a pipeline of 1.7 GW to build, Gopalan said.

When asked on stake sale, he said: "Given the amazing work Power Minister Piyush Goyal has done in transforming electricity sector in India and making India the top renewable destination in the world, we are seeing a lot of interests from investors to participate in our projects and India platform."

Earlier this month, reports had surfaced that the Adani group is in talks with SunEdison to acquire the latter's Indian assets.

The group led by billionaire Gautam Adani has reportedly asked bankers to sound it out on whether SunEdison is also putting on the block its solar power projects in India.

The company is reported to have a debt of around $12 billion.

Meanwhile, Goyal -- who is also the Minister for Coal and Renewable Energy -- brushed aside worries over any spillover effect of the debt woes of the world's biggest developer of renewable energy power plants on India's solar power plans.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an event in New York last week, he said: "There are always certain cases of firms failing all over the world in every industry. There was a point of time where very large airline companies failed in different parts of the world. You have a failed steel sector in the UK. It doesn't mean that the whole sector collapses."

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