Review of industrial competitiveness and growth of solar firms in India: Exploring role of technology management and policy

Indian Solar Market has grown rapidly after the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India (GoI) announced National Solar Mission (NSM), an enabling policy framework for rapid diffusion of solar energy, e.g. 22GW capacity by the year 2022. In an attempt to foster competition in a transparent manner, GoI preferred auction route with cap of 5MW per bidder. Unintended consequence was a fragmented industry with sub-scale players. Moser Baer, a global leading player in optical storage was one of the early entrants in the solar sector and made good progress, before NSM, focusing on European Markets and India. Company explored opportunistically across the value chain and across technologies, not focusing on differentiation and capability building and is yet to find a profitable growth path. This paper attempts to study the twin impact of policy, technology management and their relationship on a focal firm's competitiveness.