Solar firm Stride secures investment

The new series A investment, co-led by Clime Capital and UOB Venture Management, will assist Stride in scaling its business and unlocking green financing from existing and new lenders.

Stride’s platform combines tailored financing, technology, and quality assurance solutions to reduce barriers to entry for rooftop solar and battery energy storage system adoption by residential and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers in Vietnam. Stride is achieving rapid growth by partnering with a wide network of solar installers, which, combined with Stride’s proprietary digital platform, deliver homeowners and SMEs with the highest quality solar installations.

To meet the electricity requirement for economic development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is currently revising Power Development Plan VIII – to increase solar power capacity by more than 25GW to 34GW by 2030. Solar alone accounts for about 45 per cent of this additional power capacity. Stride’s innovative platform will help support the plan to facilitate mass-scale solar energy uptake in Vietnam.

Andrew Fairthorne, co-founder and CEO at Stride, said, "We are delighted to have attracted a further round of equity investment to fuel Stride’s growth. This will help Vietnam move towards achieving its climate goals by enabling more households and small businesses to access cost-efficient green energy."

Vanshika Khemka, investment manager at Clime Capital, said, "Clime’s approach means that as portfolio companies meet their growth and development targets, further equity funding is available to accelerate their progress. Stride’s success demonstrates the effectiveness of deploying early-stage risk capital into promising clean energy companies."

Clarissa Loh, executive director at UOB Venture Management, said, "With its unique position as a company that supports micro businesses transitioning to solar energy through rooftop installations, Stride is contributing to the clean energy transition needs of Vietnam, one of the most vulnerable regions to the impact of climate change. This new round of financing will enable Stride to further scale its solution, creating positive social and environmental impact in ASEAN."

Since its inception in 2021, Stride rapidly scaled its footprint across Vietnam to become a top provider of financed clean energy solutions to Vietnamese residential and SME customers. In 2023, Stride secured seed-stage equity capital from Clime via its first fund, SEACEF I, and Touchstone Partners. Stride arranged debt financing from Trine, a Sweden-based investment platform dedicated to financing solar companies in emerging markets, last year. Clime’s new investment comes via its SEACEF ll fund.

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Energy firms seek tariff clarifications Both foreign and domestic renewable energy firms have raised concerns over Vietnam’s proposed retroactive changes to subsidised pricing for solar and wind energy projects.

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