Deeptech solar startup Renkube is developing an AI-powered light harvesting glass that helps panels gather more sunlight and redirect it to solar cells to increase energy yield
(L to R) Lakshmi Santhanam, Balaji Lakshmikanth Bangolae and Deepika Gopal, Co-founders of RenKube at a solar field in Karnataka.
Image: Selvaprakash Lakshmanan for Forbes India
While working at Cisco in Bengaluru, three engineers decided to get out of the corporate bubble to use their skills in the promising renewable energy space. They started out with a simple premise—India is still importing billions worth of oil and is not energy-secure. Being a tropical country, can we capture solar energy better? This led them to start a deeptech solar startup called Renkube in 2017.
Balaji Lakshmikanth Bangolae, Lakshmi Santhanam and Deepika Gopal did not have a background in solar and renewable energy, and spent the first few years trying to come up with a business model. Their first endeavour to convert heat to electricity ended in failure after they realised there was no unit economics in it. They spent another two years in research and development. “We wanted to build something that was not done anywhere else in the world,” says Bangolae. They used that learning, and skills from their technology background, to develop an AI-based software that develops the best designs to capture sunlight. Finally, they developed motion-free optical tracking (MFOT) of solar panels.