Black Coral Capital, headquartered in Boston, MA, is a leading venture capital firm with focus on companies in the clean technology and renewable energy sectors.

In terms of emerging trends concerning my area of focus, I would like to highlight the 'energy in natural resources', especially the green technology. The last three years have been active with a lot of changes in green technology. Also, currently, we have a market that is based on fundamentals. Companies are coming up with improved performance across different industries, segments and customers.

Keeping a Close Watch on New Technologies

Among the latest technologies, Energy Storage stands-out as a prominent feature, with its enormous potential for innovation and opportunities. Also, Energy solutions are demonstrating the requisite capability to solve challenges present in the clean energy sphere. It is these solutions that have the ability to come up with ways to simplify business models and transform existing solutions by imparting improved flexibility. Other noteworthy trends take place with Microgrids, especially while considering customer innovation and power. These are the technological changes that stand-out in terms of future opportunities.

Taking start-ups towards Transformation

Opportunities are abundant for start-ups in the sector to innovate and transform. The biggest innovative opportunities are mostly associated with downstream B2B market, rather than the technology oriented innovation. Business technologies and customer channels are more popular with customers than core technology models. Therefore, we help new firms innovate by including aspects such as integration, intelligence, financing or implementation capability and many other value-added services, placing them above technology to extend an offer to customers with genuine interest in buying.

Tackling the Challenges in the Industry

It has always been a biggest concern to identify and recruit a high-quality management team, capable of leveraging opportunities for high-level execution. The team should possess passion, and I would always advice entrepreneurs to spend considerable amount of time, in locating the best team.

(As told to Anitha Nair)