Number of MNRE Solar PV Channel Partners decreases in June 2013

MNRE has announced the list of Channel Partners as of 01.07.2013. About 6 months back, we did an analysis of the channel partners and found some interesting details. For example, we found that in February 2013 that NCR region(Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad) had the highest number of channel partners(37) followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, AP and West Bengal. Similarly, in January 2013, we found that about 40% of the companies (total 69) are graded as 3B, which means that these companies just about qualify for the accreditation. 25% of the companies(43) are graded as 2B whereas 20 companies are graded as 1A, which is the best grade.(Click here for the analyses – January 2013 and February 2013).
As we went through the latest list(July 2013), we noticed that the number of Channel partners have reduced from February 2013. The decrease has been fairly uniform across the top ranking regions. The comparison is given below.

One possible reason for this could be that many of the channel partners in the earlier list either did not chose to renew their channel partnership or did not quality during the grading by the agencies like ICRA, CARE, etc.
One thing that raised my curiosity was a “*”at the end of the names of several companies. The fine print read “*No project was sanctioned to these companies by the Ministry so far”. When we counted the number of stars, we were astonished – it stood at 64.
In other words, 64 companies(or more than 1 in 3 companies), have never got subsidy for even one project. Perhaps this one number explains why the number of channel partners is declining.