By providing renewable energy to corporates, Kuldeep Jain's CleanMax has been helping them meet sustainability goals while growing in size and credibility itself
After working with McKinsey & Company as a global partner, heading energy and corporate finance practices for almost 12 years, Kuldeep Jain, then 36, decided to fulfil his childhood dream of becoming an entrepreneur. But it was not all rosy. In 2011, when Jain founded CleanMax (previously CleanMax Solar), he was clear about his target users and wanted to be a sustainability partner of corporates to help them go green by setting up gas-fired power plants. It was all going according to plan, and Jain even managed to raise money. But over the next 12 months, Jain’s business plan failed, as gas prices doubled following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011. “We came to a point where we suddenly had no business plan. I had put in a lot of money and it was also running dry. It was just year one and we failed miserably,” recalls Jain.