The electricity went off while Sujay Malve was studying. There was an exam to prepare for, and the power supply had declined to participate. Growing up in Pune, India, he learned something that a reliable wall socket allows the rest of us to forget: a plan is only as dependable as the infrastructure underneath it.
Years later, Malve would build a company around that interruption. Today he is the Singapore-based co-founder and CEO of Canopy Power, which designs renewable microgrids for businesses and communities beyond dependable grid electricity. His working world includes remote resorts, batteries, solar panels and, increasingly, power plants that float.
There is an appealing symmetry here. A student who could do little about a blackout became an engineer with a business devoted to reducing dependence on unreliable electricity. The route between those two positions, however, involved considerably more than remembering an unpleasant evening.
An engineer takes the long way round
Malve came from a family of engineers and liked tinkering as a boy. Mechanical engineering in India led to a master's in industrial engineering at Purdue University. Later came an MBA at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, where his public profile records Dean's List recognition and co-founding the Kellogg Environmental Leadership Club.
His professional education was geographic as well as technical. He spent six years in wind-energy companies in the American Midwest, working in supply chain and programme management. Then came two years in the Middle East in energy consulting, followed by business development in Singapore. Each move put him in contact with another part of the machinery behind an energy project.
That sequence helps explain the kind of company he eventually built. Manufacturing requires attention to what can actually be made and delivered. Consulting brings the financial argument into the room. Business development requires someone on the other side of the table to agree that the proposed solution is worth buying. A remote power system needs all three conversations to end reasonably well.
In 2010, Kellogg's employment report listed Sujay Surendra Malve joining Booz & Company as an associate in Dubai. The formal entry occupies a single line. It marks a useful bridge between the engineering jobs and the commercial work that preceded Canopy Power.
The customer beyond the cable
Malve joined REC Group in 2012, opening its Middle East office before moving to Singapore. Working in solar business development put a particular customer in view: someone who could pay for electricity but could not count on getting it.
On Coron Island in the Philippines, he described surveying a community of 800 households whose generator had broken down. Residents had an income and a carefully kept village. Reliable electricity remained missing. The experience complicated the easy assumption that being off the grid simply meant lacking purchasing power.
“In many places, the lack of electricity supply doesn’t mean that people are poor.”
Sujay Malve, 2017
He spent about 18 months developing a business plan before leaving his job and co-founding Canopy Power with Tim Walsh in 2016. Early private customers offered a practical way to build experience while working towards a broader ambition to serve remote communities.
Canopy's own account of its beginnings places remote sites between two more familiar solar markets: urban rooftops and large projects feeding the grid. Malve chose the places that required a different sort of attention. A remote customer's problem continues after the panels arrive, through installation, maintenance and the ordinary business of keeping equipment working.
The first island had to work
The opening contract came through a battery supplier. Misool, a diving resort and conservation centre in Indonesia's Raja Ampat, needed its power system upgraded. Canopy installed a solar-and-storage hybrid system, completed in 2018, that supplied a reported 55 percent of the resort's electricity needs. Projects in Myanmar and elsewhere in Indonesia followed.
For a young company, an operating installation carries a different weight from a business plan. It gives the next customer something concrete to examine. It also gives the engineers a real system to learn from: equipment with a location, a load and consequences when something goes wrong.
Malve's company now describes its work as engineering for off-grid, costly-grid and near-shore locations. That wording matters. A cable can exist and still provide electricity that is too expensive or too unreliable for a business to accept without looking for alternatives. The commercial question extends beyond whether a place appears connected on a map.
Tourism gave Canopy early customers. Its stated scope now includes agriculture, industrial sites, water utilities and other businesses. The common feature is an electricity problem that needs to be solved at the customer's location.
The unglamorous art of staying connected
Distance can make maintenance an expensive appointment. Canopy developed Hornbill, its technology for monitoring and managing microgrids remotely. In its account to Haymarket HQ, the company said it could address approximately 80 percent of issues without a physical visit, resolving them in minutes or hours rather than days.
That is a company-reported figure, but it identifies an essential part of Malve's business. Building a power system and looking after one are connected responsibilities. An island is an excellent place to escape a crowded calendar; it is a less convenient place to wait for a technician.
The company also described Australia as a natural extension of its work because of its widely dispersed businesses and communities. Geography supplies the connection between an island resort and an inland site: both can require a power solution built around local conditions.
Remote monitoring makes that dispersed business more manageable. The engineering still happens somewhere specific, but every adjustment need not begin with a journey.
Before the panels, the arithmetic
Canopy's engineering services include site surveys, feasibility assessments, technology selection, procurement and project oversight. Its economic modelling sits alongside the equipment choices. Financing options include power purchase agreements and lease-to-own arrangements.
Those services make a revealing inventory. The founder's task includes finding a technically suitable system, establishing what it will cost and arranging how a customer can obtain it. Sunshine may arrive without an invoice; the infrastructure for turning it into useful electricity does not.
Canopy's participation in the Unreasonable network also places Malve among entrepreneurs working on environmental and social problems. He took part in two programmes, including the Unreasonable Impact World Forum in 2021. The venture's public description brings design, construction and financing together, reflecting the range of obstacles a remote customer can encounter.
In a 2021 podcast conversation with Sanjoy Sanyal, Malve discussed the business from Singapore and the appeal of cleaner power to commercial customers, including fisheries exporting to Western markets. The pitch had room for both money saved on diesel and customers who cared how a business obtained its electricity.
When the power plant goes afloat
By February 2025, Canopy was announcing renewable systems at Soneva Jani and Soneva Fushi in the Maldives. The company reported that the two projects could reduce annual diesel consumption by two million litres. It said the systems were designed, sourced and implemented in six months, with Yonsan Engineering handling construction collaboration in the Maldives.
The figures belong to those two projects together. They also show how far the job had travelled from the first resort contract. More equipment brings more coordination: suppliers, construction partners and the customer must agree on a system that can be delivered and operated.
At Soneva Secret, Canopy worked with Ocean Sun on a floating installation. Ocean Sun supplied its membrane-based solar technology, Canopy served as developer and integrator, and Huawei supplied battery and power electronics systems. The arrangement puts each partner's contribution into view. Malve's company brings the parts together into a working power system.
Up to 80% renewable energy penetration was reported for the integrated system. These are project specifications and announced performance figures.
The attraction of water is practical. Island land is limited, while a suitable lagoon can offer space for generation. Ocean Sun's description of the project emphasises installation methods, local training and support. Even the picturesque end of the energy business comes with construction instructions.
In January 2026, Canopy reported that the Soneva Secret system could allow diesel generators to be switched off for 16 to 18 hours a day. Its projected payback was under five years. These were announced operating expectations and economics, rather than a completed multi-year performance record.
A familiar problem, a wider working map
Malve's public activity in 2026 included Canopy's tenth anniversary and an appearance at Floating Solar Asia in Singapore in September. The announced sessions covered integrated projects and the combination of floating solar, batteries and microgrids. A decade into the company, the subjects remained close to the work itself.
There is a human scale to this career even when the capacities grow. His team also pursued Canopy Care, a water-distribution project for roughly 50 households in Tanjung Sesup on Indonesia's Sugi island. The connection came through Telunas Resorts, a client. A business relationship had introduced the engineers to a neighbouring practical need.
The distance from Pune to a Maldivian floating power plant is considerable. The original inconvenience is easy to recognise. Electricity becomes interesting at exactly the moment it fails to arrive. Malve has spent his career learning what must happen before a customer can stop thinking about it.