Site icon The Invincible India

Startup Deep Dive : ReNew — it listed on Nasdaq at an billion valuation, now its own owners want to buy it back for a quarter of that

The Invincible India
The Invincible India Startup Deep Dive featured graphic for ReNew.

In August 2021, ReNew became the first Indian company to list on Nasdaq through a SPAC merger, in a deal that valued the combined business at an enterprise value of roughly $8 billion. Five years later, the same people who took it public — founder and CEO Sumant Sinha, alongside long-time investor CPP Investments — are trying to take it private again, at a best-and-final offer of $7.02 a share that values the whole company at close to a quarter of its listing-day billing.

That is not a story of failure. ReNew’s revenue has kept growing every year since, its portfolio has gone from under 14 gigawatts to roughly 20 gigawatts, and it swung from a $61 million net loss to back-to-back annual profits. It is a story about what happens when a capital-hungry infrastructure business meets a stock market that never quite worked out how to value it — and what its own controlling shareholders decided to do about that gap.

Quick facts

Company ReNew Energy Global plc (Nasdaq: RNW)
Founded 19 January 2011, as ReNew Power
Founder Sumant Sinha (Chairman and CEO)
Businesses Utility-scale wind and solar generation, battery storage (BESS), hydro, solar module manufacturing, carbon markets and digital energy services, almost entirely in India
Latest FY revenue $1,277 million / ₹10,907 crore, FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025)
Latest FY profit $54 million / ₹459 crore net profit, FY25
Listed Nasdaq, 24 August 2021, via SPAC merger with RMG Acquisition Corporation II
Market value / current offer Roughly $2.1–2.2 billion market capitalisation as of mid-September 2026; a pending take-private best-and-final proposal at $7.02/share (August 2026)
Key shareholders CPP Investments and Sumant Sinha (a combined stake above 55%), ADIA (via Platinum Hawk), JERA; Goldman Sachs, an early 2011 backer, had fully exited by 2023

What they do

ReNew builds, owns and operates wind and solar power plants across India, then sells the electricity under long-term, fixed-price contracts to two kinds of buyers: state-owned electricity distribution companies (discoms) that supply households and businesses, and large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers who buy clean power directly to cut their own bills and carbon numbers. Alongside pure generation, the company has added battery energy storage (BESS) to firm up intermittent solar and wind output, a smaller hydro portfolio, a solar module manufacturing arm that sells cells and panels to outside buyers as well as its own projects, and carbon-market and digital-monitoring services layered on top of its physical assets. Almost all of this sits in India, which is both the source of its scale and, as later sections show, the source of most of its risk.

The origin

Sumant Sinha had spent years in senior roles at the Aditya Birla Group and at wind-turbine maker Suzlon before he set out on his own. His insight was straightforward: India had committed to a large renewable-energy build-out, but the market for building and operating those wind and solar plants at scale was still fragmented and under-capitalised. In January 2011 he founded ReNew Power with early backing from Goldman Sachs, and the company commissioned its first project in May 2012 — a 25.2 megawatt (MW) wind farm at Jasdan in Gujarat, a fraction of the roughly 20 gigawatts (GW) of capacity the group would eventually assemble. The bet was that whoever could raise patient, large-scale capital fastest, and sign long-tenor power contracts on the back of it, would end up running one of the country’s biggest clean-energy platforms.

The struggle years

The road there was not a straight line. In 2018, ReNew Power filed a draft red herring prospectus for an initial public offering, aiming to raise about ₹2,600 crore on Indian exchanges. By 2019 that plan had been shelved, and the company said it would instead look at asset sales and an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) structure to raise money, according to Business Standard’s reporting on the decision at the time. Going public would have to wait.

Then came a longer, more expensive stretch. In fiscal year 2022 (the twelve months to 31 March 2022), ReNew reported a net loss of $196 million even as revenue grew, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows. The losses narrowed but did not disappear the following year: fiscal 2023 still closed with a net loss of $61 million, even as total income rose 29.1% year-on-year to $1,087 million and the commissioned portfolio grew to about 8.0 GW out of a wider 13.7 GW pipeline, per the company’s own Q4 FY23 results release. Two straight years of losses, right after a headline-grabbing Nasdaq debut, is not the story SPAC investors were sold in 2021.

The turning point

The pivotal event was the SPAC merger itself. On 24 August 2021, ReNew’s shares began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker RNW after completing a business combination with RMG Acquisition Corporation II — the first de-SPAC transaction anywhere involving a renewable-power generator, and the first involving an India-based target since 2016, according to the deal’s SEC Form 425 filing. Before the deal, ReNew was a private company that had just shelved a domestic IPO and needed a large capital infusion to keep building; the merger delivered roughly $610 million in net proceeds to the company, drawn from an $855 million PIPE (private investment in public equity) and $345 million held in RMG II’s trust, after redemptions and fees, per the same filing. It valued the combined entity at an enterprise value of about $7.8–8 billion and a post-money equity value of roughly $4.4 billion, figures confirmed independently by the SEC filing and by Business Standard’s contemporaneous reporting on the deal.

The capital did what it was meant to do: it funded years of aggressive capacity expansion and let ReNew pay down expensive debt. What it did not do was hold the share price near its listing level. By September 2026, RNW traded around $6.84, down sharply from where SPAC shares typically price at deal close, and the stock’s own controlling shareholders were the ones now offering to buy the rest of the company back — a reversal that only makes sense once you see how the ownership and financing structure evolved underneath it.

The money behind it

ReNew’s capital stack was built in stages, each backer changing what the company could do next. Goldman Sachs came in as an early institutional backer in 2011, giving the young company credibility to sign its first project financings; it had fully exited its position by 2023, per Wikipedia’s sourced shareholder history. Japan’s JERA, a joint venture between Tokyo Electric Power and Chubu Electric Power, became an equity holder in 2017, bringing a strategic utility partner rather than a purely financial one. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) invested $100 million via a rights issue in 2019, deepening the Gulf sovereign-wealth presence in the register. Canada’s CPP Investments built up its stake over the following years and had become ReNew’s largest shareholder by 2023.

Across roughly sixteen funding rounds since founding, ReNew is reported to have raised about $2.93 billion in total, per CBInsights’ aggregation of disclosed rounds — a figure to treat as indicative rather than audited, since it is a third-party compilation rather than a company-published total. What is on the record, from SEC filings, is the 2021 SPAC deal’s $610 million net proceeds and the $8 billion enterprise value it was struck at. What is also on the record is where that ownership ended up: as of a May 2026 SEC filing, CPP Investments and Sumant Sinha together controlled a majority of the company (with Sinha alone holding 19.35% of shares outstanding), which is precisely the position from which they have spent since December 2024 trying to buy out everyone else.

How it makes money

The model is simple to describe and hard to execute. ReNew signs power purchase agreements (PPAs) that typically run 25 years, locking in a fixed tariff per unit of electricity for a given wind or solar plant. Revenue is a function of installed capacity, how much sun and wind actually show up (the “plant load factor”), and the contracted tariff — none of which the company can move much once a PPA is signed. The money is made, or lost, almost entirely on the cost side: the upfront capital cost of building each plant, the interest rate on the debt used to fund it, and how efficiently the asset is operated over its life. Because fuel costs are zero, gross margins on operating assets are structurally high; the part people consistently get wrong is treating that operating margin as the whole picture, when interest expense on a heavily levered balance sheet is what actually decides whether a given year shows a profit or a loss. On top of the core generation business, ReNew also sells solar modules it manufactures, and it monetises carbon credits and digital monitoring services — smaller, higher-margin lines that do not depend on 25-year contracts at all.

The numbers

Unit: ₹ crore, converted at the rate the company itself reported for each year (its FY25 conversion is used only where noted). Figures are as filed with the SEC and in company results releases.

Fiscal year (ended 31 March) FY23 FY24 FY25
Total income (₹ crore) 8,931 9,653 10,907
Total income ($ million, as reported) 1,087 1,130 1,277
Net profit / (loss) (₹ crore) (503) 415 459
Net profit / (loss) ($ million, as reported) (61) 49 54

The pattern is a clean turnaround: revenue up roughly 22% cumulatively from FY23 to FY25, and a swing from a $61 million net loss to two consecutive years of net profit. It has come alongside heavier leverage: adjusted EBITDA rose 31% year-on-year in a recent quarter cited by Simply Wall St’s analysis of the company’s filings, but net debt stood at roughly ₹671 billion against a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of about 5.7x on the same figures — a business that is more profitable, but not obviously less indebted, than it was.

Where the money comes from

Sale of power is the core of ReNew’s income but not all of it. In FY25, revenue from sale of power was $954 million out of $1,277 million in total income — about 75% — with the remaining quarter made up of manufacturing sales, EPC and other operating income, carbon credits and similar lines, per the company’s FY25 results release. That ratio has been fairly stable: in FY24, power sales were $896 million against $1,130 million total income, also roughly 79%. The surprise is less in the split itself than in its geography: ReNew’s roughly 20 GW gross portfolio (as of 31 March 2026) is almost entirely inside India, and even within India it remains a genuinely diversified fuel mix rather than a pure-solar story — the company’s wind fleet alone is about 4.7 GW, which it states represents around 10.5% of India’s total installed wind capacity, even as solar has driven most of the recent capacity growth.

The risks

Three risks show up repeatedly in the company’s own disclosures rather than in outside speculation. First, counterparty risk: ReNew’s customers are heavily weighted toward state-owned discoms, many of which remain financially weak, and the company has carried large trade receivables — about ₹25,303 million (roughly $264 million at the September 2026 conversion rate), mostly owed by government-linked entities, according to its SEC filings — meaning a chunk of reported revenue sits as unpaid bills for extended periods. Second, physical and financing risk compound each other: grid curtailment, where transmission constraints force plants (notably some Rajasthan assets) to generate less than their potential, has directly dragged on plant load factors in recent quarters, at the same time as net debt-to-EBITDA sits around 5.7x, leaving less room to absorb a bad quarter. Third, there is a governance risk specific to this moment: the take-private proposal on the table is being made by the company’s own controlling shareholder-CEO group, which is exactly the kind of related-party transaction that requires an independent special committee — led by board member Manoj Singh and advised by Rothschild & Co and Linklaters — to protect minority shareholders, and the price has already moved twice since the initial December 2024 offer of $7.07, first down to $6.75 in May 2026 after Masdar’s exit, then back up to $7.02 by August 2026.

The takeaway

Being first — first Indian SPAC listing on Nasdaq, first de-SPAC renewables deal globally — bought ReNew headlines and a fast $610 million capital infusion, but it did not buy a durable public-market valuation. A capital-intensive, 25-year-contract business is ultimately worth what its lenders and counterparties can be trusted to deliver, not what a listing-day press release says it is worth. The lesson for anyone building an infrastructure company toward a public listing is that the balance sheet’s credit quality, not the venue or mechanism of listing, is what the market re-prices you on once the novelty of the debut wears off — and that controlling shareholders who understand this will eventually price the stock more honestly than the public market did.

Frequently asked questions

What does ReNew Energy Global do?

It builds, owns and operates wind and solar power plants in India, selling electricity under long-term fixed-price contracts to state distribution companies and large commercial and industrial buyers, alongside a smaller battery storage, hydro, solar-manufacturing and carbon-markets business.

When did ReNew list on Nasdaq, and how?

On 24 August 2021, via a SPAC merger with RMG Acquisition Corporation II, becoming the first Indian company to list on Nasdaq through that route and the first renewable-power de-SPAC anywhere, at a deal valuing the combined company at roughly $8 billion enterprise value.

Why is ReNew trying to go private again after listing in 2021?

Its controlling shareholders — CPP Investments and founder-CEO Sumant Sinha — have argued the stock trades well below what they see as fair value; they made a first non-binding take-private offer in December 2024 at $7.07 a share and have since revised it several times, most recently to a best-and-final $7.02 a share confirmed in August 2026, with an independent special committee still evaluating it.

Has ReNew Energy Global turned profitable?

Yes, on a full-year basis: after net losses of $196 million in FY22 and $61 million in FY23, the company reported net profit of $49 million in FY24 and $54 million in FY25, even as revenue kept growing each year.

Who are ReNew’s biggest shareholders?

CPP Investments and founder Sumant Sinha together hold a majority stake, with Sinha alone reporting 19.35% of shares outstanding in a May 2026 SEC filing; ADIA (through an entity called Platinum Hawk) and Japan’s JERA are other long-standing institutional holders, while early backer Goldman Sachs had fully exited by 2023.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics), applied only to current-period figures noted above; historical annual results are quoted in the dollar figures the company itself reported for each period.

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.

Exit mobile version