[laughs]

... uh, you know, take all the decisions I did.

But I guess at some level, uh, as I said, there was a level of, uh, discontent in that eventually my goal was to start something on my own.

And the more I worked with other people, the more I realized that the things that I did not have- Uh, that, uh, that would allow me to become an entrepreneur was capital of my own.

I didn't have the understanding of a specific sector where I could actually find a business opportunity.

And the third thing was I did not inherently have the risk-taking capability, because I still needed to work and, and make sure that my family was taken care of.

I got the chance to work in a company which was in the, um, renewable energy space, and that really opened my eyes to this whole area of climate change, and this is, I'm talking about fif- 17, 18 years ago.

How did you grow it, and what scale are you at now?

So do you think that India can become a renewable powerhouse? Is it on the s- right track today, or does work still need to be done?

Look, I think India has done a terrific job on the clean energy transition, and it's for a variety of reasons.

Of course, climate change is how it all started.

That is what drove the initial rollout in clean energy.

But now, especially with what's happening globally with all the wars going on and the geopolitical situation being what it is, India recognizes that we import all of our fossil fuels, or at least 85% of it, and that's a dependency that is very unhealthy for us.

And so therefore, energy security is something that we have to work on with a high degree of urgency, and the solution for, for that is to, uh, move as quickly as possible into clean energy, whether it is using renewable energy to generate electricity, whether it is to use renewable energy to power things like data centers or create green fuels, like green hydrogen and green ammonia.

All of those are areas that now the government is very strongly now pushing forward.

I mean, we were talking about what clean energy is gonna look like in 20 years' time, but what would you hope people will say what your contribution to India's development and energy future was? You might be retired in 20 years, who knows, but when they talk about renewable energy, how would you like to be spoken about in the mix?

From your vantage point since 2011 to today, how far has India come in terms of energy transition and in a way maintaining energy security?

Yeah, Nihal, hi.

Look, first of all, thank you to invite me to speak at this podcast being hosted by Mint and BCG.

To answer your question, I think in some ways, India has come a tremendous distance.

And in some ways, we've only scratched the surface.

So it's a bit of a paradoxical answer.

But the reality is that when we started, or at least when our company started 15 years ago, at that time, renewables was really a niche sector.

Sumant, as one of India's largest independent power producers, how do you see this problem of transmission capacity shortage? And in your capacity, what are you doing to alleviate this problem? Or perhaps, is there any feedback you have given the government or any pilots that you have undertaken to sort of ease the situation?