Promotion of solar energy is one of the majorsteps taken by the Government of India in its pursuit of sustainable development in recent years. In spite of the growth in electricity generation capacity reaching to 272.5GW, 75.02 million households, mainly in rural areas, are not yet electrified. Out of these, 72.4 million rural households use kerosene as primary lighting source whereas, only 0.92 million rural households use solar energy as primary lighting source (Census, 2011). Although solar PV lighting applications are better alternative in terms of quality of illumination, durability and versatility of use, there has been limited success with the deployment of this technology. This study has analysed various business models for deployment of solar PV lighting applications to identify the determinants of success and failure in rural India. The study is based on case studies, survey and interaction with various stakeholders. A variety of socio-economic, technical and market barriers have been identified. Those included are individual ownership models (Kattiwada in Madhya Pradesh, Hadi in Sindhudurg, Chavani in Raigad and Selco) and fee for service models (Amle in Palghar and Darewadi in Pune). The study shows that the major factors affecting the deployment of solar PV applications in rural areas are: the presence of local market for solar PV based products to create linkage between energy service providers and beneficiaries/end-user(s), availability of innovative financing mechanism to make product/ service affordable to the customers, awareness among people w.r.t. solar PV or other renewable energy technology, the reputation of vendor (or NGO) in the respective region which drives the acceptance of the product/ service, and willingness to pay for the product and its maintenance. Although an initial capital subsidy helps in acceptance of solar PV product/ service, the sustained use of product/ service is observed only when the users contributed fully or substantially towards the same. The lessons from the study can be extended to similar situations for other applications of solar PV technology (e.g. water pumping) or other renewable energy technologies.