What does it take to build the brand for one of India’s fastest-growing solar manufacturers GREW Solar? If you ask Rosette Soares, it is nothing to do with an MBA and everything to do with hunger to learn new things, willingness to walk the paths you have never walked before and a CEO who trusts your judgement.
Rosette Soares has spent 18 years in communications across retail, cryogenic engineering, hydrocarbon EPC, textiles, and now renewable energy. She did not stay in one sector because she could not find her footing. She moved because she was hungry: for different business models, different stakeholder ecosystems, different ways of understanding how communication shapes outcomes. At GREW Solar, under the leadership of Executive Director and CEO, Vinay Thadani, she found something she had not been looking for: a purpose large enough to hold all of it. To reach your full potential, she believes, you need a leader who instils the confidence to act independently and the trust to make it count. In Vinay Thadani, she found both.
GREW Solar, the flagship renewable energy venture of the Chiripal Group has moved fast. Founded less than half a decade ago, the company already operates a 6.5 GW solar PV module manufacturing plant in Dudu, Rajasthan, with another 5 GW facility underway. A cell manufacturing unit is also under construction in Narmadapuram, Madhya Pradesh, part of an ambitious push toward full backward integration across the solar value chain.
When Rosette Soares joined GREW Solar in July 2024 as Head of Marketing Communications, the brand’s public presence was still finding its shape. Fifteen months later, she had earned an elevation to Head of Corporate Branding – and the body of work tells you why. Under her watch, GREW Solar entered cricket’s most visible stages: partnerships with Gujarat Titans, Mumbai Indians, and Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Women’s Premier League. The brand secured a feature on JioHotstar’s Kaise Banta Hai Season 2, taking solar manufacturing far beyond the industry’s usual audience.
She Was Not Chasing Industries, She Was Chasing Depth.
When people ask Rosette why she kept moving, from Future Group to INOXCVA to L&T Hydrocarbon to Welspun to GREW Solar, her answer is straightforward: she was chasing something not escaping it. She was building an understanding of business communication that a single industry could not have given her.
The movement was intentional. Each industry had a different stakeholder ecosystem and different ways in which communication shaped the outcome. Consumer-driven narratives in retail. Cross-cultural collaboration with global engineering teams at L&T Hydrocarbon. B2C brand-building in textiles. And now, at GREW Solar, simplifying highly technical solar energy content through storytelling. Each experience added a layer. None of it was wasted.
At GREW Solar, though, something is different. The energy transition is real, she says. It is one of the most defining shifts of our time. Every day the work you put in is for the greater good. You may not even be here to see it fully unfold. But you are building something for the next generation, and that sense of purpose adds a dimension that sits alongside ambition, growth and rewards, together, that is extremely fulfilling.
What Psychology Has to Do with Solar Panels
The question comes up often. A master’s in counselling psychology may seem unrelated to manufacturing, but Rosette sees it as foundational. At the core of marketing and communication lies an understanding of people: what they value, how they trust, and what motivates them. You only know those things if you pause, pay attention, and observe. That is the basis of psychology.
In a manufacturing setup, this understanding becomes critical. GREW Solar’s operations span from plants in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh with its head office is in Ahmedabad. The workforce includes diverse groups whose realities are often far from corporate environments. Rosette focuses on bridging these gaps. ensuring communication is empathetic and inclusive
She is also candid about her leadership approach: “Having experienced ineffective management styles earlier in her career, she is intentional about creating a more respectful and motivating environment for her team. “How you treat people matters more than the numbers you draw at the end of the day.”
She Studied the Industry at Night Before She Changed It by Day
When Rosette joined GREW Solar in July 2024 as Head of Marketing Communications, she was walking into a sector she did not fully know yet. Solar energy was new territory. So spend her early months studying the renewable energy landscape, policy directions, and market dynamics before implementing changes. What she found was a lack of strategic coherence in communication. “The brand existed, but the strategy did not,” she says. Her approach was simple: every initiative should create measurable impact, even if in a small way.
With the support of Vinay Thadani, she introduced ideas that were unconventional for the manufacturing sector he did not ask her to tone them down. Rather than restraining them, he backed the experimentation. He knew she was different from other leaders he was used to working with, and the difference was worth backing. He gave her the platforms and she delivered.
How a Solar Manufacturer Ended Up on JioHotstar and in the Premier Leagues
Traditionally, solar manufacturers focus on trade platforms and policy forums. Rosette chose a broader approach. One of her early initiatives was featuring GREW Solar on JioHotstar’s ‘Kaise Banta Hai’, a show that explains how everyday products are made. . The objective was to demystify solar technology for a general audience, making it more accessible and relatable.. Very few people understand how a solar panel is made. If you can show people—right in their living room—how solar works and what it delivers before they label it an expense, you reframe the decision entirely. It stops being a cost and becomes a considered investment, for homes and businesses alike and you had changed the conversation entirely.
Sports partnerships were a key lever, with collaborations alongside Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Women’s Premier League aimed at driving mass visibility. Rosette attended the finals in her hometown, experiencing the moment firsthand as the team clinched the championship. She reflects on it as a proud milestone, particularly recognizing the significance of the victory for the captain. Raising the bar yet again, the brand extended its cricket footprint through partnerships with two Men’s Premier League teams. Gujarat Titans emerged as a natural fit, given their strong regional connect and alignment with GREW Solar’s home state. Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians brought unmatched pan-India appeal.
Teaser campaigns around these collaborations drove a noticeable surge in engagement across the company’s social media platforms, with content being consumed almost instantly upon release. It was at this point that Rosette recognized the scale of what was unfolding-this initiative was set to surpass the impact of their previous project.
The logic was direct: “if you want people to know your name, you have to go where the people are. Being at a platform like this, GREW Solar cannot be ignored.” Although the scoring system was unfamiliar, the coach-captain dynamic, team structures, internal interactions, and competitive mindset felt instantly familiar-she recognised them all from her own lived experience.
The Newsletter That Made a Plant Worker’s Painting Visible to 3,000 People
The GREW GRID internal newsletter started with a simple problem Rosette noticed: people in different locations had no idea what was happening in each other’s worlds. The head office did not understand plant realities. The plant did not know what the corporate team’s priorities were. And in between, 1,500 people were showing up every day without a shared story.
Rosette floated the newsletter idea (another of her unconventional ideas coming to life) and ran a naming contest. Employees shared their entries and shortlisted names were subject to a poll. Votes were asked for and GREW GRID won. That moment of involvement, she says, was itself the whole point.
Manufacturing as an industry tends to shine the spotlight only upwards, Rosette wanted it to cover the other side too. Nobody on the factory floor should be invisible. The newsletter celebrates things that would otherwise go unseen: the day GREW Solar made 12,000 panels in a day as a record. In the industry this is huge news. An employee investing time in the arts has shared their painting which is seen by more than 3,000+ colleagues.
There is also a practical impact: because the newsletter is digital, employees share it. It reaches people who have never heard of GREW Solar. A piece of internal storytelling quietly becomes external visibility. She laughs about this. Unofficially, but yes.
The Woman in the Room
Across industries, Rosette has often been one of the few women in leadership roles. While representation has improved, she notes that underlying biases persist. Credibility is still questioned more often than it should be,” she says. However, she observes a shift. Women today are more assertive about their space and value, which she believes is where meaningful change begins.
“It is a longer route,” she says. “A tougher one. But it builds a kind of mental toughness that you did not know you had, because you had no choice but to find it.” What she notices now is that women are pushing back. They are not willing to shrink anymore, and they know their worth. That, she thinks, is where the real change starts, in women deciding they will not make themselves smaller to fit a room that was not built for them.
Stepping Away from Work Is Exactly What Makes Her Better at It
Outside work, Rosette bakes, photographs, reads, dances, listens to music, and finds meaning in the arts. She has not given any of it up. She is firm about why.
Creative work needs thinking space. It needs exposure to various elements.. When she is photographing and someone starts a conversation about the camera she is using, that exchange sharpens her. Most of the best professional relationships she has built in this industry came from conversations that started somewhere outside it.
The arts keep her curious. Sport shaped her instinct and her resilience. Baking, she says with honesty, is partly because she has a sweet tooth, All this keeps her ego in check. Time and again she realises that there are people doing much better things than her and she still has a long way to go. Her closing thought on all of it: “stepping away from work is exactly what makes me better at my work.”
Know Your Value, Lift People Up, You Will Go Farther
When asked what she would tell the next generation stepping into their careers, Rosette does not reach for the obvious answers. She gives three things.
“Learn about the industry you are getting into. Not just the surface of it, but what is actually happening, where it is going, what the country needs from it. Know how you bring value if you are going to show up there. And always lift the people around you. They will take you further than any individual achievement will. You will never make it alone.”
Over nearly two decades, Rosette Soares has built a career across industries that were not always ready for her. By staying curious, grounded, and consistent, she has shaped a role that reflects both her experience and her perspective. The degree that defined her path was not the one on paper.
