The Biggest Energy Shock Ever Why Clean Energy Is Indias Only Way Out

TITLE: dGZWl8Dsh0c CHANNEL: Unknown DATE: ---TRANSCRIPT--- Are we in middle of a big energy shock?

No, look, we absolutely are. There’s no question about it. What is driving power demand? Is it global warming or is it this massive creation of data centers? Look, I think in a country like India where economic growth is happening at 6 to 7% or 8% every year. There is organic demand growth happening. You know, all sectors of the economy going up and therefore an organic increase in our power requirement. Why is that? Solar has now become the go-to place for power producers to really choose as a medium. There are two three reasons for that. Number one is that solar has become by far in most geographies the cheapest form of new electric. So what happens to a basic module manufacturer because that’s one space where stock markets are excited. Look markets are always right. If any young person is thinking about our sector, I would say there are only really two sectors in the world that are worth getting into right now. One is AI, the other is anything. If you have to meet someone for a dinner, current, past, or you can choose, who would that personality be and why? Who would I like to meet? Dinner, not date. The world runs on energy. It always has and it always will. But the source of energy is changing faster than anybody predicted. It is changing faster than governments and policy makers are prepared for. So what is the future of energy transition? Will energy prices come down? The shift from fossil to nonfossil is this a bubble or this is a long-term mega trend. What needs to be done for India to ensure their green power dream is safe and secured? And in today’s geopolitical noisy environment, how can one really secure energy security? My guest on the show today has been building this answer from 2011. He started with a 25 megawatt wind energy capacity in Gujarat and today owns 20 gawatt of clean energy business. The company is listed on NASDAQ and today he’s supplying power to the likes of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. We are talking to at a time when the world is going through a massive energy shock. Tall comparisons are being drawn. This is like uh oil Arab embargo. It is similar to the Gulf crisis we saw 20 years ago. Are we in middle of a big energy shock? No. Look, we absolutely are. There’s no question about it. And in fact, you referenced a couple of other oil shocks earlier. Uh one can argue and say that this one is actually much worse than all of the others. and um the full ramifications of which have yet not been fully felt and will carry on reverberating around the world for the next many months at the very least and uh I think it’s going to change how countries like India particularly uh look at our entire energy uh sourcing and energy strategy dynamics. I think it’s going to have a very fundamental view on our thought process. The short-term concern of course is inflation, higher oil prices, drop in consumer demand. But that is more like a shortterm myopic view because of this energy shock. What will change permanently? Like they say necessity always and compulsions they always change everything. What will change permanently because of this energy shock? Well, you know, I think that it’s been very clear that for India for a many many years, our accolles heel of our economy has been our energy situation. We as you know import 80 85% of our fossil fuels and fossil fuels account for a majority of our energy consumption. uh by some measures we import between 150 and $200 billion worth of fossil fuels every year which is almost a third of our total imports. Huge amount of FX outflow. It’s always been something that we talk about whenever energy prices go up as you know inflation goes up, rupee falls and it’s all round negative impacts for the economy. And the change that this uh episode is going to uh bring to Indian policy makers minds is that this dependence cannot continue. Now until now the interesting thing is that India did not really have a choice because there’s no other way of meeting your energy requirements other than through fossil fuels. Over the last 15 20 years however the world has changed. The energy world is in fact changing around us. We’re living in the midst of one of the biggest energy transitions the world has ever seen. Right. This started off uh about 20 years ago uh as a result of a sensitivity towards climate change and therefore climate change and the whole issue about what might happen to the world and to our future generations 30, 40, 50 years later is how renewables got started, right? And how the whole push towards more solar, more wind started. But what has happened over the last 20 years is that the cost of renewables through technology improvement through application at scale has actually come down to such an extent that the cost of using energy or generating energy through renewables now is cheaper than through generating fossil fuels or energy from fossil fuels or even coal for that matter. So this solution was at hand and now this new crisis has hit us. Earlier when this crisis hit we did not have the solution. Today we have the solution. So summer of 2026 in hindsight would be remembered for more like an eye openener for every policy maker that the acceleration in energy transmission needs to be accelerated. Absolutely. I think that is going to be very clear. Um and you know what is going to happen is going forward we are actually at a fork in the road. Up till now the entire energy world was mixed up. fossil fuels, clean energy, coal, whatever you have, right? I think now what’s going to happen is that the world is going to bifocate into two very clear U camps. One is that of the fossil fuel rich countries and the other is that of the fossil fuel deprived countries like India, also includes the far east, also includes all of the European countries, right? These countries are going to realize that the way forward for us has to not be based on fossil fuels but on clean energy which is in some ways going to lead us down the path of therefore electrifying more parts of our economy. So you’ll really have two camps today. The fossil fuel camp is in some ways being led by the US which has a lot of fossil fuels is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of fossil fuels and China on the other hand which has been going after the strategy for the last 20 25 years and you can argue they’ve been very precient about the whole thing uh they’ve really cornered the market for all of this now the challenge for a country like India is going to be how do we take some part of that market away from them at the very least to reduce our dependency for clean tech products away from China because we don’t want to trade one dependency on the rest of the world for fossil fuels towards China on clean tech. So allow me to just uh lay the world map here or the power map of the world. This is US where in 5 years there has been a very marginal uptick in the total power capacity. China the number here I think is giant and India right in the center where things are really moving up. But Mr. You know some would say that wherever the power capacity is getting added up it is solar power capacity which is really getting added up in US and India and again in China. Why is that? Why is that solar has now become the go-to place for power producers to really choose as a medium. There are two three reasons for that. Number one is that solar has become by far in most geographies the cheapest form of new electricity and therefore by extension the cheapest form of new energy and that is why anybody who wants to who needs new electricity says solar power is the best way forward right uh so that has been one reason. Second is solar is relatively easy to execute once you get the land then putting up the solar field in it is is very simple and straightforward and so and and plus solar equipment prices have gone down quite dramatically. So for all of those reasons most countries have really expanded their solar capacities quite substantially and even in India uh you know five seven years ago over the last 5 7 years we’ve probably added close to maybe 75 to 100 gawatt of new solar capacity which is almost equal to 20% of India’s entire power sector installed capacity today you know so I think that’s why solar has been really really much more the predominant source in most countries uh what is driving power demand is it global warming or is it this massive creation of data centers look I think in a country like India where economic growth is happening at 6 to 7% or 8% every year there is organic demand growth happening people requiring more heating or cooling uh industrial growth happening uh you know all sectors of the economy going up and therefore an organic increase in our power requirement and I think that is going to continue within that in some geographies however where power demand was not growing let’s say the US for example which was flat as far as power demand is concerned suddenly AI data centers have become a big driver of power demand growth in India also that will be the case but in the face of already an organic growth of 6 7% data centers will be a relatively small part of that overall growth maybe they’ll add another one one and a half% to an already existing 6 7% that was there before that so I think it is going to be a contributor in some parts of the world entirely in terms of net demand in places like India a one other subset of demand growth data center is largely dominated by large tech companies Google Microsoft Amazon as of now they’re claiming that they want to source power from clean source so is this another hint of energy transition getting more and more accelerated data center is going to be fueling more and more demand for clean energy. Of course, it will be. Of course, it will be and you’re absolutely right. These companies have really taken a much more I think progressive view or enlightened view towards how they want to source energy. Uh having said that uh and so therefore in the longer term they do want to transition towards clean energy for all their data center requirements but they may transition through using power from the grid for example to begin with and then transition over time into green energy. So net net there is going to be an increased demand for green energy coming from the data centers although it might start more from power from the grid to begin with. M do you believe in what Elon Musk is now claiming that look all the power demand for data center is not going to be coming from the world the power would be generated somewhere in the space do you see that happening or that is science fiction look Elon Musk is a guy who’s made science fiction happen so one cannot discount what he says right and he has a track record to prove it I don’t know how the economics stack up certainly it requires massive ability to launch uh you know hundreds of tons of equipment into space and then and then put the whole thing together. Maybe it’s doable at some point in the future. I don’t know what the cost eventually is going to be, but let’s let’s see what happens. I mean, okay, so let me put the three obvious sources of power. Coal, thermal as we say. There is wind, which is how you started, and there is solar right now. Solar power prices once upon a time, it’s not actually once upon a time, 15 years ago, they were about 15 to 18 rupees per unit, right? they’ve come cracking down to 2 and a half rupees per unit. Uh wind has been flat by and large in last 5 years and thermal prices because coal prices have gone up they’ve gone up by about 32 35% depending on the year which you’re looking at. Have energy prices bottomed out in solar? In solar I would say not necessarily and I’ll tell you why. There is still a lot of technological improvement happening in solar. Uh we have we are going to higher and higher efficiency cells. We are now going to go to perovskites at some point in the very near future and that will take efficiencies up over 30%. And which means that the cost of production will come down by another 20% 25%. And I’m sure that that that technology is going to keep evolving and so I feel that solar cost can continue to go down. uh but I think you have to now start looking not at the cost of generation you have to look at the cost of delivering steadystate power into the grid and that’s how you have to now start looking at things and the argument of the coal guys has always been that look we provide steady state power right we use the grid a lot better and therefore you should look at the full costing of renewables made steady state to coal which is already steady state to which I would add that you should also therefore factor in the cost of the environment which the coal guys very often don’t do right and then look at the whole thing on a full basis right so I think when you do that analysis you’ll find that solar and wind are still by far cheaper than coal based power and that is why as far as electricity is concerned on a made steady state basis wind and solar and particularly solar is going to be far cheaper than now producing any energy through coal and so on the only limiting factor is that if your demand is doing at 6% a year in a country like India, we need almost 70 to 80 gawatt of new wind or solar capacity to be put in place into the grid every year. That requires a massive buildout of the grid. It requires a massive buildout of storage. It requires a massive ability to manage a lot of this intermittency into the grid because you also have variable renewables coming into the grid. People putting up solar rooftop, people putting up solar pumps and so on. So managing all of this is going to take a bit of effort. It’s not going to happen overnight. But because adding 70 80 gawatt in a year is not something that we’ve done as a country so far. Last year we did close to 50. Maybe in the next 2 three years we get there. Therefore we may have more coal coming in in the next 5 years. But I think after that that’s going to be it. We won’t have any more coal new coal plants coming in after that. And so if you ask me, my sense is that we will reach peak coal in India by 2035 because that’s around the time when you start having large scale nuclear coming in as well. And so we’ll have everything new incremental after that coming in from fundamentally from clean sources of energy not from this. Now that solves the electricity problem but electricity is only 20% of energy. So the question is how do you address the balance 80%. And that’s really where the whole conversation really now needs to migrate to which is how do we electrify more and more and bigger parts of our entire energy value chain and take this balance 80% of energy which is transportation whether it’s you know on air or sea or surface uh you take industrial sectors we are setting up for example we’re doubling our steel capacity a lot of that new capacity is coming up through blast furnaces not through electric arc furnaces So you’re locking in coal consumption for a long period of time in other sectors not on electricity right so we need to focus much more deeply on the other sectors and make sure that we don’t lock in a lot of coal usage in those other sectors for the next 25 30 years and that’s where we need to start bending the curve down now by 20 50 yeah which is 25 years from now do you think the thermal capacity a in the world and b in India could be extinct those plants could become shipwrecks. I don’t think they’ll become extinct because look once an investment has happened then nobody is going to just say you know what I’m going to shut that plant down unless there is some climate catastrophe and people just say you know what cost doesn’t matter I’m just going to shut it down. I think barring some unforeseen event like that you’ll continue to run these thermal assets to the end of their useful life lifetimes but at least you won’t start building any more coal based capacities. Why wind power or wind energy in India has not been successful? Uh you started as a wind power solution company. When did you realize that look I need to move beyond that? You know there was um I think for several reasons we had to move beyond wind. Number one is that solar just became cheaper. So as any buyer would want the cheapest product our our customers started wanting the cheaper product between the two which is solar. So therefore we naturally as the demand as the market migrated we also migrated more towards solar and that’s why in the last I would say 5 years the bulk of our capacity addition has been in solar which by the way does not mean that we’re not adding wind. Last year we were the company that added the largest amount of wind capacity in India and today we’re still the largest wind company. But there are two other issues with wind apart from cost. The first is that wind speeds in India have changed quite substantially over the last five six years uh to to the to the sort of to the detriment of wind generation and so whatever long-term forecast we made for generation from wind assets has not materialized. Now whether this is a temporary change uh and therefore the cycle will reverse itself or whether this is a structural change it’s not something that we’ve been able to get a proper answer to and therefore we’ll only discover over the next several years what the outcome what the new reality is going to be. The second thing is that wind execution is a lot harder uh for a variety of reasons. right away problems are a lot worse, a lot harder to deal with. Um and so therefore adding a lot of wind capacity for anybody not just for us is quite hard. Now the solar industry in India some would argue and said that look there is a massive duty protection. Indian companies are not efficient. They do not have the advantage what other countries have and they are protected largely because of this entire duty protection by the government. Is that true? Well, look, let me put it to you this way that 20 years ago, most of the solar manufacturing used to happen, if I take this away, in Europe, okay? Um then and nowhere else, right? Slowly it started migrating towards China and then what the Chinese did is they built such a degree of scale, right? That Europe got totally wiped out. Okay. Now, in the world today, there is only one country that manufactures solar. Okay. Okay. and that is China. Now the last thing India wants is to trade its dependence on the Middle East for oil towards China for clean techch imports. I think that’s it’s just going to be the same. we are not going to have energy security. And so the Indian government especially with all the things that happened around Dlam and so on took the view and the right view by the way that this energy is a strategic industry. Solar is a strategic industry for us and sector for us and therefore we must start producing solar panels within the country. Now they had to do this in the context of an industry which is adding a lot of capacity and I must say they’ve done a pretty damn good job of making sure that capacity additions have continued to happen which is why we did 40 gawatt of solar last year and at the same time we’ve developed a domestic industry. It’s not an easy thing from a policy standpoint to have managed it but they have managed it and full full marks to them for that which is why now slowly India is emerging as a supplier of solar in manufacturing product at this point only for ourselves right we also have to go further up the value chain which is going to take us the next 5 to seven years at least to do but once we do that then we will not be dependent on China unlike the rest of the world and then eventually if all the rest of the world says you know what if that this if there’s one lesson that we’ve learned in the last 10 years right it’s do not have concentration risk in your energy supplies then they will realize that they have concentration risk on China that’s when they’ll have to start thinking about buying from India as well and that’s when India can become the alternative supplier to China so that’s the direction that we’re going in and I think it’s a very very important thing to do so if I have to let’s say put a broad sketch of the solar sector in India there are module manufacturers then there are in in integrated player like yours and then there are backwardly integrated solar equipment manufacturers. 5 years from now who will survive, who will perish and who will take a giant leap? Well, you know the funny thing is that the solar manufacturing industry started off being a very profitable industry and a very capital-like industry and it started from modules. So the whole supply chain the way it goes there are four stages to the solar manufacturing supply chain. You start with polysilicon then you come to wafers and ingots then cells and then modules modules is the easiest most capital least capital intensive. So that’s where people got in started manufacturing and the huge amount of capacity got set up in modules because everybody and their brother thought this was the best industry to get into. Now as as the government is requiring people to go further up the value chain, value is going to keep migrating further back and not everybody can make the move further back simply because you require a lot more capability and skill sets to go further up the value chain and it’s more capital intensive and so therefore to me the guys who will end up doing well in this solar manufacturing industry are those people who are going further up the value chain. So we for example have 6 and a half gigs of module manufacturing capacity. We currently have two getting expanded to 6 and a half cell capacity and we’ve just broken ground on our wafer ingot plant as well. And the idea for us is to have a fully balanced plant. Right? I think that’s going to be very important and people who have that capability will be the ones who will survive as manufacturers. we have the added advantage that we’re also a buyer of that equipment right and so therefore we also have an offtaker a dedicated in-house offtaker for our solar equipment so I think the guys who are eventually going to be successful will be those that have everything all the way from sand to electrons that level of integration so what happens to a basic module manufacturer because that’s one space where stock markets are excited those stocks are now commanding or some of the stocks are commanding valuation which are as high as consumer stocks which is that nothing could go wrong will not contract competition will not come in and they will be able to protect their mo look markets are always right right and I let me leave it at that but as an industry uh you know pair do you expect consolidation happening at the entry level do you expect that there would be I don’t know that there’ll be see consolidation implies people acquiring other people’s assets I think what is going happen is that people who are setting up these assets will get their paybacks relatively quickly. Uh and once there’s over capacity in the industry, you will have to we’ll just have to shut down some of this over capacity. What is the right way for an investor to look at the power sector? Because the traditional definition of the power sector is that look, it’s an asset heavy business. It requires leverage, lot of debt. There is there are long-term contracts which in a sense are tied up with the central government or with the state government within a short supply of fuel. That was yesterday’s definition. That definition has changed now. So how should a investor really look at the power sector because what we’ve seen sir in last 1015 years is absolute reality check for fossil fuel. We’ve seen a massive disruption when it comes to clean fuel clean you know disruption for the positive for clean fuels and I but the thing is you know uh Nikon we’re still at the beginning of this disruption we have we’ve just scratched the surface because as I said today if you think about it in electricity renewables accounts for only maybe wind and solar accounts for only about 13 14% of total generation so just in electricity we have another 80 80 85% to Oh, but all of that accounts for only 20% of energy, right? And energy itself is growing at 4% a year. Now, when I fast forward these numbers, by 2047, India needs to add almost 3,000 gawatt of new solar and wind capacity. And our target for 2030 is 500. So we need a 6x growth from 2030 to 2047 in 18 years, right? Which is a massive capacity increase. And if you compare it, you’re talking about the US for example earlier. The US total installed capacity from all power generating sources today is 1,200 gawatt. We need to add two and a half times of that in wind and solar in the next 20 years in India. That’s going to be a massive investment opportunity. So the growth in our sector is going to be simply enormous not just in generation but in running and managing these assets in the um in the software that goes into running these assets in um in capturing all of this data and data centers for example uh in battery and storage that has to come in in transmission capacity that has to get built out. So the opportunity for investment and growth in our sector is just enormous and companies that play the right the right strategies in this are going to really end up doing quite well for themselves. So this is an industry that is going yes it is capital intensive but there is going to be growth and there is going to be profitability that is going to offset the capital intensity nature of this business and which is also therefore going to drive a lot of value creation across not just generation which you talked about but a whole bunch of other sectors as well and as I said companies that can execute across the value chain smartly in you know in a in a clean concise manner are really going to create a lot of value for themselves. I’ll drop a big block here. Something which you’ve not spoken about. Nuclear. Mhm. A lot of effort now genuinely is at play at a global level and even at policy level in India. Can the nuclear power dynamics change the entire dynamics of the power sector in India and in the world? And could this could that really disfigure all assumptions and calculations? No, I don’t think it’s going to disfigure all the assumptions. I think it’s going to be an add-on to the clean energy part of the ledger. When I look at fossil fuels versus non- fossil fuels, it’ll be something that will come in uh at the margins. And when I say at the margins, I mean maybe supply up to 5 to 10% of new clean energy that is coming in. But nuclear is going to have a bit of a lead time. It’s going to take at least I would say uh 5 to seven years for technologies to mature and it takes at least 5 to seven years to implement a new nuclear plant. The fact that you moved into manufacturing and manufacturing is critical mass integration and also exciting. What prompted you to take again that giant leap towards manufacturing? While and solar they don’t complement each other, manufacturing is something which sits right in the center. Well, first of all, I’m really glad that we did make that transition and uh because, you know, it’s become a it’s become a profitable business. It’s contributing really nicely to our bottom line. Uh it’s not a business that we’ve invested a huge amount of capital in, but it’s sort of self- sustaining now the growth in that business. So, it’s doing very well for us. Uh and therefore, I’m very happy that we took the call very early on to get into solar manufacturing. Uh the reason we took the call is because you know as we were getting into as a country into this direction it wasn’t clear to me who you know how rapidly that sector would evolve and whether all the new guys who were getting into it would be able to meet our quality and supply requirements and that is why I said the best way to control this is to do it ourselves and that’s why we decided to go into it and as I said it’s played out very nicely. uh what we’ve discussed is last five years. Marcus always look forward. Let’s talk about next five years. What will be your one big outsiz bet? I think there I don’t think there’s going to be one specific bet. Um there are two three things that we’re going to keep doing. One is we’re going to keep building and recycling in the generation side. We’re going to keep investing further up the value chain on the manufacturing side. So a lot of capital will go into that area. But we are going to be looking at data centers very seriously. Uh data centers data centers as in becoming a supplier of power to data centers uh at the very least. But look, we also have the competence of acquiring land, dealing with state governments. That’s something that we do uh it’s our bread and butter. Uh so there’s no reason for us also not to forward integrate a little bit more beyond power. Perhaps into providing powered land, perhaps providing a powered shell. So we’re going to look at all of those things and we’ll see which of those is the right model for us to progress. But at the very least we’re going to become one of the biggest suppliers of power to data centers. Today as you observed in your opening comments we’re already supplying one and a half gaw of power uh to the US hyperscalers as their need for clean energy for data centers goes up. They’re going to be the most natural partner for them and that’s the direction that we’re going to move in. Our CNI business is already among the top two largest in the country and that’s an area that we’re going to grow quite substantially and within that this whole supplying into data centers is going to become a very big area for us 10,000 crores of Eida 1,000 crores of projected PAT what is your fiveyear ambition you have to give me more than 10,000 cr of IDA and certainly more than look I think you know all I can tell you is the future is extremely exciting um 10,000 crores in 15 years starting from zero and starting from scratch I think is an enormous achievement for any company uh I feel very proud that we’ve been able to reach this uh this uh this point but you know forget that as you said Marcus don’t look at the past neither do I frankly right I look at the future and the future as I said is extremely exciting there’s just so much happening in our sector there’s so many ways in which we can play this growth uh there’s so much capital coming into our sector there’s so much organ organic growth and newer areas that are emerging that I’m very excited about figuring out how we going to make decisions about where to grow. But I would say in the next 5 years there is no reason for us not to increase this 10,000 cr of ibida by a multiple right uh and uh the ball really is in our court as to how rapidly we can drive this growth and this transformation so I’m very excited about it. You’ve lived u four innings a banker uh then with the deta group you were leading suslon and now an entrepreneur u which has been the most enjoyable experience look there’s no there’s no debate on this whole thing I think that the most exciting phase has been the current phase of being an entrepreneur I always wanted to be one u I’m glad that I became an entrepreneur it’s been an exciting ride it’s been it’s not always going like this always up and down. Uh but you know what you have to enjoy the journey and I must say I’ve really really enjoyed the journey so far but I’m equally looking forward to the future. You come from a family which has a very strong political background. You’re the finance minister’s son. Your brother is also active in politics. Uh like they say politics. It never prompted you to join politics. You know I I get that question a lot and I always find it interesting that people ask me that question. You know when I grew up first of all my father was a bureaucrat. He was not a politician. So my DNA is not that of being a in a politician’s family. My DNA is of growing up in a bureaucratic family where the emphasis was on academics, hard work, doing well in school and college, which is why I went to IIT, which is why I went to IM, which is why I got a degree overseas, and which is why I went to work for other people because that’s the only thing I could do. But I, you know, I I nurtured this dream of becoming, as I said, an entrepreneur at some point. And um and that dream was not to become a politician. Although of course when when my father did become a politician it seemed very attractive because you know as in India being a very dynastic place you know it’s an easier path in becoming an entrepreneur for me was a harder path nobody in my family by the way went into business I do not come from a business family there is no DNA there was no sitting across the dinner table and having conversations about how to run businesses in India so I’ve had to discover everything how to do everything myself how to deal with people in government how to execute in India and I must tell you for me it’s been a more exciting journey to do it that way to do it myself. Uh I think I’ve grown a lot as a as a person. I think I’ve done it in nobody else’s shadow. Uh it’s been entirely my own journey and I cherish each and every minute of having done it myself. Um and to me is there a number you were chasing? No, I am not. And you know the that’s a very interesting question you’ve asked because for some time and for quite some time I was but then I realized that entrepreneurship is is a journey. There’s no end point. Okay. You want to carry on. And so what I’ve realized is that you don’t chase a number, right? You chase an end not even an end objective. You have a you chase a purpose. You chase a purpose of what is it that you’re trying to achieve in life and what is it that you’re doing all this for. At the end of the day all of us have to die. Whether you die with 20 billion dollars or 20 rupees, it doesn’t matter, right? So the question only is you have to enjoy the journey that you’re on. You have to have a sense of purpose to your life and you have to have a sense of doing something of impact for the rest of the world. In doing that, of course, you have to live a comfortable life because you can’t be living on the streets and all of that. But I think beyond that, the sense of purpose really is what drives me. If you have to meet someone for a dinner uh whether it is current, past or you can choose who would that personality be and why. Who would I like to meet? Yes. You know dinner not date. Okay. Okay. Look, I I uh there are two people that come to mind and very dissimilar people uh but at some level quite similar as well. Um one I would like to meet Mahatma Gandhi and I’ll tell you why because he had the courage of his convictions right and he was able to stand firm and he was able to communicate that courage to at that time 400 500 million Indians and that required a I I just like to learn what what made him I very recently visited his birthplace in Pulband. Mhm. And it’s a it’s a regular place like any other place. What made him special and unique, right? Uh is really what I’d like to understand. Not not what is known in the public domain, but the thought process that he went through the through the evolution in his own mind that he went through. You know, for me, what fascinates me is how people evolve over their own lifetime because you’re not the same person at the age of 80 as you were at the age of 30, right? you go through lots of challenges and you you change, you evolve which is what I admire by the way about the prime current prime minister as well and that he’s grown you know in so many ways um and we’ve seen that happening as well right so so that’s I’d like to understand that journey the second person I’d like to really understand um is Warren Buffett again you would say very tried very sort of trite answer but again you know he stuck to his folksy homespun style But again courage of his convictions right he developed a full investing style of his own didn’t matter what was happening in the rest of the world he just stuck to his own philosophy so I think that that kind of you know steadiness and sticking with what you believe in uh to the you know detriment and being able to cut out all the noise both in Gandhi’s case and in Warren Buffett’s case I think is actually quite similar uh I can assure you a lot of uh our audience would like to know few basic things from you which is that it is generally perceived that the power sector is a hard sector to get in. It requires capital. It requires managing policy makers and policy making which means somebody sitting in a college is unlikely to be thinking about really creating a career in this. It’s very easy to create a tech company. It is very easy to perhaps you know create a pharma company. It is very easy to create a engineering company for someone who wants to say that look this is the biggest transition happening in the world. How do I participate? I have no capital. But I like what someone has told me. You know there are many ways of playing the sector. You don’t have to go out there and become a setter up of solar and wind projects and nuclear projects and so on which require billions of dollars of investment. Right now you don’t have to do that. You know you can set up a waste recycling unit. You can set up a company that sets up recharging stations. U you can become a company that is developing new battery technologies. Uh you can become somebody who is providing you talked about IT services into the sector. You can become somebody who’s doing O andM for the sector. This you can become a ancillary provider making encapsulance which requires a much smaller amount of investment. So there are many ways in which you can play the sector today, right? Which will all grow over the over the years, right? Which are less capital intensive than the industry that I’m in right now, which perhaps is now too late for somebody to get into, right? So I think there are if any young person is thinking about our sector, I would say there are only really two sectors in the world that are worth getting into right now. One is AI, the other is energy because these are the two sectors that are going through massive transformation and that are going to be of massive scale. So as a young p if somebody’s a young person I would really advise them to get into energy and by the way energy underlies AI as well right so in some ways energy is the most fundamental sector that anybody you know it’s going to be a massive sector people should definitely look at getting into our sector how approachable are you as an individual if somebody wants to reach you what’s the best way to reach you very easily approachable you can reach me by email you can reach me by LinkedIn you can reach me you know not don’t accost me on the street or anything. Not that you know who I am on the street but LinkedIn or uh email is really the best person and I get a lot of emails from young people saying look I’m graduating from XY Z college or university I really am interested in this sector I would love to understand more or get more and if I don’t have the time to talk to them I’ll direct them to uh somebody in my office to talk to but I respond to everybody who writes to me. M uh if you take the clock back and talk about the entrepreneurship journey uh a lot of changes have happened at a macro level in last 15 years a lot of changes have happened at a policy level we’ve dealt with covid we’ve dealt with demonetization we are now dealing with tariff right now what was that moment when you said I was much better off earlier set because you know I think at at a base level but I think at a at a at a base level doing anything in being an entrepreneur at least in my view is uh is uh more exciting than working elsewhere. Entrepreneurship is risk or planning or luck. It’s a mix of all of them. Okay. A lot of it is about seeing the future as much as you can see it and then reacting to gut instinct. By the way, I should tell you that I was a very I thought of myself as a very objective person, you know, very datadriven person. But I’ve now realized that entrepreneurship is as much about the gut as it is about anything else. You form a view and then sometimes you go searching for data to justify that point of view. And before we wrap, uh what is that personal habit of yours? It hasn’t changed at all. You’ve been carrying it forward from your college days. That’s a good question. I don’t have an off-hand answer. You probably have to ask one of my friends or my wife as to what the answer to that question is. But I’ll tell you what has not changed about me is that I still enjoy a lot of things. Uh I enjoy watching sports. I can watch a lot of cricket uh or any other sport for that matter. I love watching movies. I love reading good books. So my my base level of enjoyment or the things that I enjoyed doing earlier in my life I still enjoy them doing them very much. Sina you’ve done something which is very rare from unknown to unforgettable. That’s the franchise you’ve created a franchise which is going to be changing the dynamics of the Indian sector. The pure foundation which you laid 15 years ago with just an idea today now has become a mainstay. All I can say is that in last uh 15 years when I have or last 20 years observing you as an professional now as an entrepreneur for me as an independent observer and as exjournalist it’s just been such a lovely association. Thank you very much for joining us because thank you so much for having me as I said and I wish you all the best in your entrepreneur journey as well. I hope you find it as exciting as I have found mine. Well I cannot think like you so maybe I’ll have to find some luck somewhere. Okay. Thank you very much.