Most Indians who want solar power have nowhere to put the panels. They rent a flat, live in a high-rise, or share a rooftop that is not theirs to build on. A Bengaluru startup called SundayGrids decided the panels did not have to sit on your roof at all — they just had to be yours, somewhere.
A biscuit of sunshine
SundayGrids was founded in 2020 by Mathew Samuel, Naseer Sathyala and Tarun Joseph, and its idea is disarmingly simple: digital solar. Instead of installing panels at home, you reserve a slice of a solar plant that SundayGrids has installed on a commercial or residential host building. The plant sells its power to the host, and you earn credits on your own electricity bill — one credit is worth one rupee off the bill. The company calls each small slice a “solar biscuit”, and you can reserve as many as your monthly bill needs.
The model is built for the people rooftop solar leaves out: tenants, flat-dwellers and anyone whose roof is shared, shaded or simply not theirs. There is no installation, no permits and no hardware at your end. The credits work across more than 70 power providers in India, they never expire, and if you move house the credits move with you. The company says you can exit at any time and get a refund on your reservation.
The plants themselves are bigger than a home rooftop system — typically 50 to 100 kW — which the company says brings the price per kilowatt down. Its projects, such as Argo Bloc-1, use TopCon modules with power optimisers to squeeze more out of shade and cloudy light.
From a 5 kW pilot to 3.5 MW
The first project was a 5 kW installation on a rooftop in RT Nagar, Bengaluru, generating around 300 kWh a month. Funding from Rainmatter, Zerodha’s initiative, in 2022 helped the team build out compliance and the product, and the platform opened for community participation in 2023. By 2026, the company says, it manages around 3.5 MW of capacity — up from roughly 500 kW in 2023 — has offset nearly 18,000 power bills and facilitated close to two crore units of power credits. It works with utilities and public institutions including BESCOM and the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission, and live projects such as Parker 110 run until 2041.
The next step: trading sunshine with your neighbours
SundayGrids is now piloting peer-to-peer energy trading in Delhi, building the infrastructure for households to sell surplus solar power directly to other consumers. It is the same decentralised-energy vision behind the India Energy Stack, the Ministry of Power’s digital rails for electricity — and with Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh set to pilot peer-to-peer power trading under that stack, the company’s timing could hardly be better. What began as a way for flat-dwellers to buy sunshine is becoming a way for anyone with spare solar to sell it.
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