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Panel: Debt, Equity, Blended Finance: Matching the Right Capital to the Right Project
Date & Time
October 23, 2026 11:00 AM - 11:45 AM
TypePanel
India’s BESS pipeline contains at least four fundamentally different project types — FDRE, standalone BESS on capacity charge, merchant, and distributed — each with a different risk profile, revenue certainty and counterparty structure. What does the right capital structure actually look like for each project class?
Project debt from commercial banks works well for projects with long-term offtake agreements and creditworthy counterparties. However, this breaks down quickly for merchant projects, distributed assets and anything where the revenue stream has meaningful uncertainty. Where does commercial debt stop being the right tool, and what replaces it?
Innovative finance instruments — including financing solutions offered by Development Financial Institutions filling the void that Viability Gap Funding development projects aren’t able to for utility-scale projects — are designed precisely for the gap between what commercial lenders will finance and what the market needs built, and which many Indian developers have never accessed. So, what does the process actually look like, how long does it take, and what does a project need to demonstrate to qualify?
Infrastructure equity platforms are showing interest in India’s storage market. What would need to happen, in terms of project design, contract structure or revenue certainty, to bring that capital into the market at scale?
