Australia home solar fintech start-up raises $73m

Local investors Skip Capital, which is associated with Atlassian’s other co-founder Scott Farquhar, and Airtree Ventures also participated, as did Singapore’s Qualgro Partners.

All four VCs backed a $10.5 million round last year. This followed a $14 million round in 2018 from Grok, Skip, and Airtree. Since its inception in 2016, Brighte has raised A$145 million and A$500 million in debt, including Australia’s first 100% green certified asset-backed securities issuance in October 2020.

Brighte offers credit services that help homeowners install rooftop solar panels and batteries. It also provides financial services to home improvement businesses in this field. The company claims to have grown 912% in a three-year period, approving more than A$600 million in finance for 75,000 households and fostering a network of 2,400 solar and home improvement businesses.

“What we have achieved in four years is just the beginning,” Brigthe’s founder and CEO Katherine McConnell said in a statement. “This is a $45 billion per annum addressable market opportunity – of which $3 billion is solar, battery, and FCAS [frequency control ancillary services] – and there is significant room for more growth.”

Australia is considered the world leader solar technology, having developed the first commercial panel some 30 years ago. It is also a leader in the household segment, with 2.6 million homes currently able to generate electricity and send it back to the grid. In 2019, the country deployed new renewable energy 10 times faster per capita than the global average.

Grok was active in this space as recently as October when it joined Blackbird Ventures and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency in an A$8 million round for Sundrive, a hardware supplier focused on using new materials to create more efficient solar cells. Sundrive’s panels are said to be thinner, free of precious metals, less expensive to install, and less energy-intensive to manufacture.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Cleantech
• Early-stage
• Financials
• Australia
• AirTree Ventures
• Qualgro
• energy
• Financial Services
• renewable energy