Enphase Energy: a Moral Booster for Solar Technology Companies

Enphase Energy a darling of wall street in the Solar Technologies finally went for a IPO, although it had to slash the IPO price by 30% to under $7. As of today it is valued around  $270 million dollars. Enphase basically designs, develops and manufactures Solar Micro-inverter to be used with individual Solar Panel to export direct AC power to the grid. It is mainly a power electronics company in the solar sector. It is the first company in the solar electronics sector to go for public listing.

Enphase gives confidence to other companies in the similar domain and also for the VC’s to bet on the sector. Other companies will follow the suite.

 

 

Recent Developments in Indian Power Sector

India is generating around 200 Gigawatts of Electricity annually and around 110 to 120, which is around 60% is being generated by coal power. Even after facing huge supply shortages, power companies are still banking on coal power ?

There are better alternatives like wind and solar which is gaining enough momentum to finally challenge these folks.

It is really interesting to see that by the time these projects comes live the demand should fall as consumers adapt green energy solutions.

When will the great Indian people understand the benefits of solar energy.

 

 

AirBnb and Agoda made our Honeymoon a wonderful experience

Finally I entered into a marriage relationship with my longtime girlfriend Kanchana. It doesn’t feel much difference as of now, but now she is my wife. I feel Girlfriend is much better coveted word than Wife.!

To Enjoy time together as our first honeymoon we visited to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia. All trips we booked online with the help of Agoda and AirBnb , Both gave us a unique experience of its own kind.

I was very much impressed with AirBnb, because the you get to meet individual house owners and stay there and enjoy the local hospitality. AirBnb is disruptive in international travel. From now onwards we would prefer AirBnb better than Agoda. Eventhough Agoda was good, we did not feel the touch of local hospitality as earlier one (or later as we went to Bali after Kuala Lumpur) and in Bali we stayed with local folks.

Initially we were skeptical to use AirBnb and now I recommend it to everyone from Honeymooner’s to retirees. Good job AirBnb folks. Keep it going.

 

 

Why Less is More: Example from Snapdeal and Crazeal

Less is definitely more. This is more pronounced when I looked into the new snapdeal site. Right now it is too cluttered.

Here is a look at the old site.

Snapdeal Old Website

The above site is clean and impressive. The time ticking clock creates a sense of urgency to buy the deal and every day it has fresh deals, so it keeps users hooked.

Instead of improving on that, they went and redesigned the site and made it too clutter.  Have a look at it

snapdeak new design

It looks like they tried to copy from Groupon and flipkart. One thing they forgot is the neatness and less is more concepts.

This website doesn’t urge  user buy anything. They seriously need to get back to the old strategy of simple website.

Their solution is a problem for the user and will adversely  affect their business.

Solar Market Prediction For 2012

2011 has been dismal for solar companies across the world with Evergreen solar filing for bankruptcy and First Solar slashing the forecast and BP Solar exiting from solar business after 40 years.

While Solar panel manufacturers are suffering with oversupply, solar electronics manufacturer’s are blossoming healthily in the choppy market. There is lot of work and solutions that needs to be developed in this area of electronics.

Semiconductors, apart from solar panels, particularly power electronics side, like Inverter, DC-DC converters will have a new found market space and demand to develop new solutions. The demand will come in the low end of the market directly from end user.

Rural areas of India will boost solar application market and there is a real need to develop end to end solutions.

Lets see who will win the race.