Startup Deep Dive : CleanMax — how a McKinsey partner built India’s largest corporate clean-power supplier

CleanMax generated roughly ₹1,295 crore of operating profit (EBITDA) in FY26, its highest ever, yet the company kept just ₹85.6 crore of that as net profit. The gap is the whole story: this is a business that throws off cash from long-term power contracts, then hands most of it to lenders, because building solar and wind farms for corporates is paid for with debt — and CleanMax was carrying about ₹8,087 crore of it at the end of FY25.

The firm now behind that balance sheet, Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions, spent its first eighteen months selling a business it then abandoned. Founder Kuldeep Jain, a former McKinsey global partner, set it up in January 2011 to build gas-fired power plants for factories. When gas prices roughly doubled after the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, that plan collapsed, and in 2012 he pivoted to putting solar panels on corporate rooftops for free and selling the power back. Fourteen years later, that pivot has become India’s largest supplier of clean power to companies, a March 2026 stock-market listing, and a share price that Brookfield, Warburg Pincus and the World Bank’s IFC all bet on before public investors could.

Quick facts

What CleanMax does

CleanMax sells green electricity to companies. It builds, owns and operates the generation assets, then supplies the power to corporate buyers under long-term contracts, so the customer avoids the upfront capital cost. In its draft IPO prospectus (DRHP), the company describes itself as India’s largest commercial and industrial renewable energy provider. It reaches those customers through three main structures, plus a services arm:

• Rooftop solar (opex model): CleanMax installs panels on a factory or office roof at its own cost and sells the generated power to the occupier via a power purchase agreement (PPA). This is where the company started and became the market leader.
• Open access: larger off-site solar or wind farms feed power to corporate buyers over the grid, letting a company in one location buy from a farm elsewhere in the state.
• Group captive: the customer takes an equity stake (at least 26%) in the project and consumes at least 51% of its output, a structure that reduces certain regulatory charges. This was the single largest revenue source in H1 FY26.
• RE services: engineering, operations and maintenance and related services on top of the power-sales business.

By the end of FY26 the company supplied firm-priced green power to 588 corporate customers under bilateral contracts, across 21 Indian states and international markets including the UAE, Bahrain and Thailand. A marquee reference client is the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru.

The origin: a gas plan that died in Fukushima

Kuldeep Jain was not an obvious founder. He spent roughly twelve years at McKinsey & Company, elected a global partner in 2008, running the firm’s energy and corporate-finance work in India after stints across Singapore, Hong Kong, London and Zurich. He is a chartered accountant and an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus. In January 2011 he left to build what he called a sustainability partner to large corporates.

The first version of that idea was not solar at all. Jain’s plan was to set up gas-fired distributed power plants for industrial customers, a sensible bet given India’s gas supply outlook at the time. Then, in March 2011, an earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan. Japan and others pivoted hard to imported gas, global prices roughly doubled, and the economics of gas-fired captive power in India fell apart before CleanMax had built at scale.

Rather than wind down, Jain reused the core insight — corporates want cheaper, cleaner power and will sign long contracts for it — and swapped the fuel. In 2012 CleanMax began putting solar plants on corporate rooftops at its own cost and selling the electricity back under a PPA. It became one of the pioneers of that opex model in India, and within a few years the number-one player in C&I rooftop solar.

The struggle years

The pivot worked commercially long before it worked on the bottom line. Two features of the model kept CleanMax under pressure for more than a decade. First, every megawatt it added was an asset it owned and financed, so growth meant borrowing. Second, C&I power sales depend on state-level open-access and captive rules that change often, so each new structure had to be re-engineered around regulation.

• The gas write-off (2011–2012): the founding business plan was abandoned within about eighteen months when post-Fukushima gas prices made it unviable.
• Years of losses on the way up: even as revenue grew, the company reported a net loss of ₹59.4 crore in FY23 and ₹38 crore in FY24 (per its DRHP and financial summaries), as depreciation and interest on a fast-growing asset base outran operating profit.
• A debt load that quadrupled: borrowings rose from ₹1,605 crore at the end of FY22 to ₹3,971 crore (FY23), ₹5,570 crore (FY24) and ₹8,087 crore (FY25). Building the leading C&I platform meant financing it largely with debt.

CleanMax only returned to net profit in FY25, with ₹19.4 crore — a thin figure on nearly ₹1,500 crore of revenue, and the clearest signal of how capital-intensive this business is.

The turning point: Brookfield takes control

The event that reshaped CleanMax came in June 2023, when Brookfield acquired a controlling interest through its Brookfield Global Transition Fund (BGTF) for about $360 million (roughly ₹2,965 crore), a mix of primary capital into the company and secondary purchases from existing shareholders. Warburg Pincus, the private-equity firm that had anchored CleanMax since 2017, exited as part of the deal.

The numbers on each side of that event tell the story. Before it, CleanMax was a well-funded but loss-making C&I developer with roughly 1 GW of operating capacity and a fragmented investor base. The Brookfield capital came with a stated ambition to build a platform exceeding 5 GW within three to four years, and the balance-sheet firepower to buy assets rather than only build them. By the end of FY26, operational capacity had reached about 3.1 GW — up nearly 80% year on year — with a contracted portfolio of about 5.7 GW of power sales. Control by a global infrastructure investor also set up the exit that public markets would later provide.

The money behind it

CleanMax has been institutionally funded almost from the start, which is why so much of the IPO was existing investors selling down rather than the company raising fresh cash. The funding shape, in order:

• 2011 — Bessemer Venture Partners: an early seed of about ₹20 crore ($4.5 million), one of the first backers.
• November 2017 — IFC: the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation put in about $15 million of equity.
• 2017 — Warburg Pincus: about $100 million, alongside IFC, in a round reported at up to ₹700 crore — the capital that funded the leap from rooftops to grid-scale farms.
• April 2019 — UK Climate Investments: ₹275 crore of equity to expand renewable capacity.
• June 2023 — Brookfield (BGTF): about $360 million (roughly ₹2,965 crore) for a controlling stake; Warburg Pincus exited.

Other named holders going into the IPO included Augment Infrastructure (via Augment India I Holdings) and Danish-linked DSDG Holdings. As of August 2025, Brookfield’s entity and Kuldeep Jain together held roughly 74% of the company, with Brookfield the single largest block. In the offer-for-sale, the DRHP listed sellers including BGTF One (₹1,970.83 crore), Augment India I Holdings (₹991.94 crore), Kuldeep Jain (₹321.37 crore), KEMPINC LLP (₹225.61 crore) and DSDG Holdings (₹190.25 crore).

The IPO itself shrank between draft and deal. The DRHP filed on 16 August 2025 proposed ₹5,200 crore (₹1,500 crore fresh plus ₹3,700 crore secondary); SEBI cleared it on 30 October 2025. The IPO that ran on 23–25 February 2026 was smaller: about ₹3,100 crore, made up of a ₹1,200 crore fresh issue and a ₹1,900 crore offer-for-sale, priced at ₹1,000–₹1,053 per share. Of the fresh proceeds, the company earmarked about ₹1,125 crore to prepay or repay debt.

How it makes money

The part people get wrong is treating CleanMax like a high-margin software firm because its EBITDA margin looks enormous. It earns money like an infrastructure owner, not a service business:

• Money in: long-term PPAs (typically 15–25 years) for power delivered from assets CleanMax owns, plus fees from services. Contracts are firm-priced, giving predictable revenue.
• Where the margin sits: because the cost of running a solar or wind farm is low once built, operating margins are high — FY26 EBITDA was about ₹1,295 crore, an EBITDA margin near 59% on ₹1,913 crore of revenue.
• Costs out: the heavy costs land below EBITDA — depreciation on the asset base and interest on debt. That is why FY26 EBITDA of ₹1,295 crore became just ₹85.6 crore of net profit.
• The leverage engine: each new project is largely debt-financed, so scale and net debt rise together. Net debt to EBITDA ran at roughly 4.3x–4.7x across FY25–FY26 (CARE Ratings), with gearing near 2.5x at FY25 end.

In short, the model converts corporate demand for green power into a portfolio of contracted, cash-generative assets — and profitability depends on financing those assets cheaply. CleanMax’s cost of debt improved as its credit rating was upgraded to CARE AA-/Stable in May 2026, from A+/Positive, helped by a customer base of which more than 82% are rated in or above the AA category.

The numbers

Revenue has more than doubled over three years while the company crossed from loss into profit. Figures below are revenue from operations and net profit/(loss), in ₹ crore.

• FY26 revenue: ₹1,913 crore, up 28% on FY25 (company results).
• FY26 profit: ₹85.6 crore, up about 4.4x year on year; Q4 FY26 alone was ₹45.4 crore of net profit on ₹557 crore of revenue.
• Note on FY25: the DRHP as filed reported FY25 total income of ₹1,610.34 crore and PAT of ₹27.84 crore, a slightly higher figure than the ₹1,495.7 crore revenue-from-operations and ₹19.4 crore PAT used in later results and third-party notes. Both are quoted here so the difference is visible; the ₹1,495.7 crore / ₹19.4 crore series is the one CleanMax and ICICI Direct used against FY26.
• Capacity, for context: operational capacity rose from about 1,040 MW in FY23 to roughly 3.1 GW by FY26.

Where the money comes from

The revenue split has shifted in a way that surprises people who still think of CleanMax as a rooftop-solar company:

• Group captive is the biggest single stream: group-captive projects made up 52.48% of renewable-energy power-sales revenue in H1 FY26.
• Data centres and AI are the fastest-growing demand: data-centre and AI-related customers accounted for about 42% of the contracted power-sales portfolio as of Q3 FY26 — capacity for that segment grew roughly tenfold, from 254 MW in FY24 to about 2,380 MW in FY26.
• Named data-centre deals: CleanMax expanded a renewable supply arrangement with STT GDC India beyond 130 MW, and contracted a hybrid solar-wind project to supply about 32 million units a year to Iron Mountain’s data centres.
• Geography: the bulk of revenue is Indian (21 states), with a smaller international footprint across the UAE, Bahrain and Thailand.

The surprise is the customer mix: a company built on manufacturers’ rooftops is now, on a contracted basis, substantially a supplier to India’s data-centre and AI build-out — the part of the economy with the fastest-rising, most power-hungry demand.

The risks

• Leverage. Borrowings reached ₹8,087 crore at FY25 end, and net debt to EBITDA of roughly 4.3x–4.7x means interest costs consume most of operating profit. Rising rates or slower asset ramp-up would squeeze the thin net margin directly; the company is using about ₹1,125 crore of IPO proceeds to pay debt down.
• Customer and sector concentration. Data-centre and AI customers are about 42% of the contracted book. That concentration ties a large share of future revenue to one capital-cycle-sensitive sector, even though more than 82% of customers are rated AA or above.
• Regulatory dependence. Open-access and group-captive economics rest on state-level rules — cross-subsidy surcharges, banking and wheeling charges, and captive-consumption thresholds. Changes to these, which vary by state and shift periodically, can alter the returns on contracts already signed.
• Execution risk on the backlog. CleanMax reported roughly 2.6 GW of contracted capacity still to be executed at FY26 end. Delivering that requires large, largely debt-funded capex on schedule, exposed to land, grid-connection and equipment-supply delays.

The takeaway

CleanMax’s transferable lesson is not about solar. It is that a founder can lose the original product and keep the original insight. Jain’s bet in 2011 was that corporates, not governments, would drive the shift to cleaner power and would sign long contracts to get it. The fuel he chose to deliver on that bet — gas — was wrong within eighteen months. What survived was the customer relationship and the contract model, and those carried the company from a failed gas plan to India’s largest corporate clean-power supplier and a public listing. The number to remember is the one in the hook: ₹1,295 crore of EBITDA, ₹85.6 crore of profit. It is a reminder that in asset-heavy businesses, the winning move is not just building demand — it is financing the assets cheaply enough that the demand actually pays.

Frequently asked questions

What does CleanMax do?

CleanMax builds, owns and operates renewable-energy assets — rooftop solar, and open-access and group-captive solar and wind farms — and sells the power to corporate customers under long-term contracts. As of FY26 it supplied about 588 corporates and describes itself as India’s largest commercial and industrial renewable energy provider.

Who founded CleanMax and when?

Kuldeep Jain founded it in January 2011. He is a former McKinsey global partner (energy and corporate finance), an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus and a chartered accountant, and remains Founder and Managing Director.

Is CleanMax listed, and who owns it?

Yes. Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions listed on the BSE and NSE on 2 March 2026 after an IPO of about ₹3,100 crore priced at ₹1,053 per share at the top. Its largest shareholder is Brookfield, through the Brookfield Global Transition Fund; Kuldeep Jain and Augment Infrastructure are also significant holders.

How much money does CleanMax make?

In FY26 it reported revenue from operations of ₹1,913 crore, up 28%, and net profit of ₹85.6 crore, up about 4.4x on FY25’s ₹19.4 crore. Its FY26 EBITDA was about ₹1,295 crore; the gap between EBITDA and net profit reflects heavy depreciation and interest on its debt.

Why is CleanMax’s profit so small compared with its EBITDA?

Because it is capital-intensive. Each project is an owned, largely debt-financed asset, so depreciation and interest are large. Borrowings were ₹8,087 crore at FY25 end and net debt to EBITDA ran at roughly 4.3x–4.7x, leaving a thin net margin even as operating profit is high.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Business Standard — CleanMax to raise ₹5,200 crore via IPO; DRHP filed with SEBI (August 2025)
• HDFC Sky — Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions files DRHP for IPO; turns profitable in FY25 (August 2025)
• Angel One / India Infoline / SaurEnergy — Clean Max files DRHP for ₹5,200 crore IPO, OFS sellers and details (August 2025)
• Screener.in — Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions consolidated financials and borrowings, FY22–FY25 (accessed September 2026)
• Energetica India — CleanMax reports 28% YoY revenue growth in FY26 to ₹1,913 crore, PAT jumps 4.4x (2026)
• FundsIndia / ICICI Direct — Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions IPO note (FY25 EBITDA, segment split, valuation) (2026)
• CARE Ratings — Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions rating rationale and upgrade to CARE AA-/Stable (May–October 2026)
• Business Standard — Brookfield acquires controlling stake in CleanMax Solar for $360 million (June 2023)
• Trilegal — Brookfield acquisition of controlling interest in Cleanmax Enviro Energy Solutions (2023)
• Bloomberg / CleanTechnica / Warburg Pincus — Warburg Pincus invests $100 million in CleanMax Solar (2017)
• Business Standard — IFC invests $15 million in CleanMax Solar (November 2017); CleanMax raises ₹275 crore from UK Climate Investments (April 2019)
• Forbes India — How Kuldeep Jain’s CleanMax is greening India Inc (2022)
• Groww / Zerodha / Chittorgarh — Clean Max Enviro Energy Solutions IPO dates, price band and 2 March 2026 listing (2026)
• Business Today — Clean Max shares offer 31% upside, says Antique; share price ₹1,340.50 (July 2026)
• TipRanks / SaurEnergy — CleanMax data-centre deals with STT GDC India and Iron Mountain (2026)
• SolarQuarter — CleanMax partners with Bangalore International Airport Ltd (February 2024)

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