Stride, a Vietnam-based solar firm, announced Monday that it has secured series A equity from new investor UOB Venture Management and existing investors Clime Capital and Touchstone Partners.
Stride said in statement that the new series A investment will assist the firm 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.
The firm is achieving rapid growth by partnering with a wide network of solar installers, which, combined with its proprietary digital platform, deliver homeowners and SMEs with the highest quality solar installations.
To meet the electricity requirement for economic development, Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) is currently revising its power development plan – the Power Development Plan VIII (PDP8) – to increase solar power capacity by more than 25GW to 34GW by 2030.
Solar alone accounts for about 45 percent of this additional power capacity.
Thus, Stride’s innovative platform will help support PDP8 to facilitate mass-scale solar energy uptake in Vietnam.
“We are delighted to have attracted a further round of equity investment to fuel Stride’s growth,
“This will help Vietnam move toward achieving its climate goals by enabling more households and small businesses to
access cost-efficient green energy,” said Andrew Fairthorne, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Stride.
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,” she added.
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,” she added.
Since its inception in 2021, Stride rapidly scaled its footprint across Vietnam to become a leading provider of financed clean energy solutions to Vietnamese residential and SME customers.
In May 2023, the firm secured seed-stage equity capital from Clime via its first fund, SEACEF I, and Touchstone Partners.
In 2024, Stride arranged debt financing from Trine, a Sweden-based investment platform dedicated to financing solar companies in emerging markets.
Clime’s new investment comes via its SEACEF ll fund.