Interviews

Artha Energy Resources is a four-year old data first company, a part of the Artha Group of companies. Artha is a part of Damani group with interests across venture capital, power, hospitality, stock markets, and real estate.

The first business of Mitsubishi Electric in India was equipment supply for electric locomotives to the Indian Railways in the early 1960's by its Transportation Systems Division in Japan.

The gas-based cogeneration in India is still a challenge because of gas pricing. Currently, it is difficult to motivate the consumer to go for the gas- based combined heat and power (CHP) option. Except for fertilisers and oil & gas companies, we are not seeing much except for those installed before.

You are heading the thermal business for General Electric (GE) in South Asia. Can you throw some light on the business and the prospects in India? I have been working with GE Power in Zurich, Switzerland for the last 12 years. Around two years ago, GE acquired the thermal power business of Alstom and I had the opportunity to head the South Asian division of this business in India.

Saurabh Kumar's eyes light up the moment one starts talking to him about his favourite passion, energy efficiency. An Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer of the 1992 batch, Kumar took charge as Managing Director at the Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) in May 2013.

The first pillar our partnership with India is based on is nuclear. India's strong mission to increase the use of nuclear from 3 per cent of the energy mix to 9 per cent by 2030 is very ambitious.

The outlook for thermal power generation market is not negative as India is still hugely underserved on electricity. The current limbo is caused by a sudden addition of about 100 GW in a five year period, driven by a policy of coal block allocation i.e., a rush encouraged by the premium from fuel shortages.

Both the state and central governments have created a very positive environment through various subsidies such as waivers on interstate transmission and, banking and wheeling charges for solar projects.

Siemens has been a pioneer in motor manufacturing. The company's manufacturing setup in Kalwa is one of the oldest Siemens setups in India. It was also the first to manufacture the entire range of energy efficient motors (labelled as IE1 & IE2) in India in 2011.