India’s Avaada Group is expanding its solar manufacturing footprint as it pushes toward full vertical integration across the PV value chain. Chairman Vineet Mittal outlined the company’s strategy in an exclusive interview with TaiyangNews Managing Director Michael Schmela at REI 2025, stressing that self-reliance in key materials is central to India’s long-term energy security.
Mittal said Avaada is accelerating work at its 7 GW manufacturing hub in Nagpur, where it is bringing an integrated factory for ingot-wafer-cell-module production online. The company has also begun developing a 1,200-ton-per-day (TPD) solar glass facility, which he described as a step toward building an integrated city where the company will produce all that it requires to consume, at a cost advantage.
He noted that India currently lacks a dense ecosystem of nearby suppliers, making in-house production essential to meet the group’s own high material demand.
Vertical integration, he said, has become a strategic necessity. India’s solar sector has faced supply chain disruptions in the past, including stalled overseas deliveries in 2021, prompting Avaada to build a model where it can predict costs more reliably and support its 30 GW growth ambitions.
As domestic solar demand rises, from around 25 GW to 26 GW last year to an expected 40 GW this year, Mittal said the supply side is expanding even faster, creating a mix of strong and weak players. He argued that only companies with advanced technology, scale, and integration will remain competitive.
Mittal shared that some manufacturers are still marketing legacy technologies such as multicrystalline products, which he considers obsolete. He expects the market to shift toward TOPCon and eventually perovskite-tandem technologies over the next 5 to 6 years.
The chairman said larger, higher-wattage modules are already improving project economics by cutting balance-of-system costs, cable requirements, and energy losses. Avaada is also offering insurance-backed guarantees and positioning its financial strength as a differentiator in a market where many manufacturers may not survive in the long term.
Looking 3 years ahead, Mittal said Avaada’s ambition is to become a full “sand-to-molecule” company. He explained that the group plans to convert sand into solar glass, use polysilicon to produce ingot-wafers-cells-modules, generate green power with solar, wind, and batteries, and use this to provide round-the-clock (RTC) electricity to data centers, while also using it for green hydrogen with which it will produce green ammonia and green methanol.
He described this future portfolio as combining molecules and digital intelligence to support India’s clean energy transition.
