BRIAN KENNY: Welcome to Cold Call, where we dive deep into Harvard Business School’s groundbreaking case studies. It’s been 10 years since 195 nations signed the Paris Agreement, the landmark international treaty that formalized the concept of net zero emissions. Today, thousands of companies around the world have set ambitious goals to achieve net zero emissions, including Tata Power, India’s oldest and largest private power producer.
By 2045, Tata has committed to phasing down its reliance on coal, even as India’s energy demand continues to grow. Today’s case looks at whether Tata Power can balance profitability with purpose as it diversifies into renewables, distributed energy, EV charging, and smart grids. Should they focus narrowly on their strongest businesses or is being integrated across the value chain, a source of resilience in a transforming sector? And what lessons does their journey offer for companies navigating similar energy transitions worldwide?
Today on Cold Call, we’ll discuss the case, “Tata Power and India’s Energy Transition” with Professor Vikram Gandhi and Dr. Praveer Sinha, CEO of Tata Power. I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR podcast network.
Vikram Gandhi teaches about sustainable investing, and he is the founder of Asha Ventures, an impact-oriented venture capital firm. Dr. Praveer Sinha is CEO of Tata Power and the protagonist in today’s case. I’m thrilled to have you both here joining me on Cold Call. Thanks for being here.
VIKRAM GANDHI: Thank you, Brian. I’m delighted to be here.
PRAVEER SINHA: Thank you, Brian, and thank you, Vikram. Such a pleasure to be part of this program.
BRIAN KENNY: Yes. I didn’t realize until I started doing a little research that it has been 10 years almost, I guess it’ll be 10 years in December, that the Paris Agreement was signed. And certainly, there’s been a lot written about it and a lot of analysis done on it over the years and mixed reviews about how effective it’s been. But I thought this case really nicely teed up many of the complexities that organizations face as they try to meet these ambitious goals of net zero emissions.And so thank you for writing and thank you for being here to talk about it. And let’s just dive right in. Vikram, I’ll start with you. If you can tell us why you decided to write about Tata Power’s transition and what your cold call is when you start the discussion in class.
VIKRAM GANDHI: Sure, Brian. So just to give you a little context, so the Tata Power case was written for another course that I teach at HBS. It’s an immersive course, it’s immersive field course, it’s called “Development While Decarbonizing, India’s Path to Net Zero,” where we have classes in the fall, which will start in October of this year. And then I take the MBA students to India and spend 10 days there, five days in Mumbai and five days in Bengaluru, to really explore the energy transition in a growth and developing economy. And the genesis of writing, both developing the case, developing the course, and then writing the case, was one fundamental concept, which is that as I got involved with a lot of the climate initiatives at Harvard, not just at the business school but across the university, I found that the focus, to a large extent, was on OECD countries where the growth has slowed down and it’s more about energy transition, reducing emissions, and not really about how do you balance growth with carbon and decarbonization agenda. And so what I felt was that 60%, 70% of the world is still growing dramatically. Power access and energy access is still an issue. And so how do you actually make that happen where growth has to be balanced with a low-emission agenda? And there was no better example than India as a country and Tata Power as a company to actually focus on that. So that’s the genesis of the case. I mean, Tata, as you know, are one of the biggest industrial houses in India, one of the leaders in India. And I’m sure Dr. Sinha will elaborate on that a little bit on this podcast. And we’ve taught this case now a few times and I will teach it again. This is January at the Harvard Business School classroom in Mumbai where Dr. Sinha comes as a guest. And the cold call is pretty straightforward because I try to keep it light because they’re, first of all, in a new country and jet-lagged and everything else. It’s not too aggressive. But basically, it’s like what are the key elements of Tata Power’s net zero emission strategy, and what are the pros and cons of it? That’s the cold call.
BRIAN KENNY: Okay. Maybe you can set the stage for our listeners who aren’t as familiar with the challenges that India faces, where it comes to these climate challenges, what makes energy transition in India uniquely challenging compared to other emerging markets?
VIKRAM GANDHI: Well, the challenges are similar to other emerging markets, quite honestly, but India, just given its scale, is just at a totally different level. One of the statistics which are in the case is that about 75% to 80% of India’s infrastructure has still not been built. And the fact is that everything that you require to build infrastructure, power, steel, cement, growth in terms of income levels and affluence, if you will, food, all these things actually are high-emitting industries. And so therefore, India was a perfect example where it’s at scale, it’s nearly one and a half billion people. It’s the biggest country in the world from a population standpoint. And the GDP per capita is about $2,300 per capita. And so it’s at a stage where the inflection point of growth is going to happen in a big way. Even if carbon intensity per unit of power production or steel production goes down, the actual demand in terms of actual numbers goes up. And so therefore, how do you balance that? Because the adverse impacts of climate change in a developing country like India are probably going to be more extreme than they would be in the US.
BRIAN KENNY: Dr. Sinha, let me turn to you for a second. Tata Power has committed to net zero by 2045. And in India, I think their target was 2070. So you’ve really set a very ambitious goal for yourself. What drove you personally and strategically as you accelerated this timeline for Tata Power?
PRAVEER SINHA: So Brian, when we started discussing about the climate change that is happening and how we need to transition to clean energy, we initially thought in 2020 that we would become net zero by 2050. And subsequently, we improved it to 2045. This is not about a choice that we need to make, but it’s a commitment that how do we bring smart solutions, to bring 24/7 reliable electricity to the consumers? And we identified certain technologies, and because we are an integrated power company, we understand that it’s not just about generation, but it also about supply and doing a demand forecast as to what is the profile of consumption that the consumers will have. And that helped us to identify opportunities whereby we can transition from the conventional generation, which typically gives you the base load to intermittent generation with storage, with the hydro to move towards clean energy solutions. This is, of course, a work in progress, but we feel very strongly committed that this is the right thing to do for the country, and what is right for the country is right for us in Tata Power. And that’s why we took a bold step, and we stand committed, and we do have a solution, and we’ll definitely implement it.
BRIAN KENNY: Vikram, I’ll come back to you for a second. The case does a wonderful job of showing some of the things that the balance that they need to strike as they think about focus versus breadth. And some people had questioned whether or not Tata Power’s shift away from thermal was leading them to overdiversification. Can you talk a little bit about the strategy here and how you would manage that tension of focus versus breadth as you look at all the many ways in which you can get to net zero?
VIKRAM GANDHI: Yes, for sure. I think one of the key fundamental issues here, Brian, is the short term versus the long term. I mean, I think if you believe in climate change, which I think has been proven scientifically, and so there shouldn’t be any question about that, that in the long term, whether it be through regulation or through market forces, that companies are going to have to focus on decarbonization. And particularly in a country like India, where demand power or power for demand is actually going up demographically, that to do it in a cleaner way. Having said that, one of the questions which I heard investors have, and maybe Dr. Sinha can comment on this a little bit more, is that there are other opportunities in India of buying really distressed thermal assets, cheap thermal assets, where the actual short-term return could be pretty high as opposed to investing in renewables and new technologies and others. If I have a certain amount of capital to allocate, should I allocate it in buying distressed thermal assets and turn them around because thermal energy is still until storage capacity is scalable and can be done in an economical way, base load factor … So just to … A little sidetrack here, Brian.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
VIKRAM GANDHI: Base load factor in terms of having the ability to provide 24/7 energy is critical. And right now, storage is just not there economically from a scale standpoint. That’s one. And two is security. I mean, right now, India has … As you can see from all the discussions around tariffs and India buying Russian oil and everything else, the reason why India is buying Russian oil is because it’s still very, very dependent on fossil fuels for energy generation. Coal, on the other hand, actually is domestically available. And so from an energy security standpoint, too, from a strategy perspective, the country’s saying India has a lot of sun, India has potentially a lot of wind, India has a lot of hydropower, like lots of rivers and flowing. So therefore, how can we, over a 25-year period, actually take advantage of that so we are not dependent on Russian oil, and it’s the biggest outflow of foreign exchange in India by far. And so to reduce that is critical. And Tata Power plays an important role in that. But again, it gets back to the short term versus the long term. So that’s one. And two is, should Tata Power be in everything from generation to distribution to retail? So generation, transmission, and distribution being the three elements of energy. And the third, I would say, is technology. I mean, ultimately, I think the key solution here for India, for most developing countries, is coming up with technologies that can be implemented at scale, at an economic level that is viable relative to fossil fuels. And I think how Tata Power, as a leader, by a clear leader in the industry, which is why I was delighted to write this case, and as I said before, Dr. Sinha and his whole team have been very, very supportive of this, is how a leader like Tata Power can show the way for the country and for other people in the energy industry to invest in technologies that can make a huge difference.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. That’s a big challenge, Dr. Sinha, what he’s just described for you there. I’m wondering how do you think about balancing these tensions, the time tensions that Vikram mentioned, and also the tension between reliable sources of energy that we know about versus experimental pilots, and new technologies, and things?
PRAVEER SINHA: So Tata Power has always been about not only leadership in thought, but also leadership in action. The whole premise of setting up Tata Power in 1915 was to produce clean energy through hydropower and bring it to the city of Mumbai. And I think we owe it to the country, owe it to everyone here, that we need to try some new solutions. And they may be path-breaking, sometimes you will succeed, sometimes you will not, but it’s very important to take a leap of faith. And as Vikram mentioned that we had lot of choices, but we said that there are solutions, these are difficult solutions at present, but as we move forward, they will become much more scalable and much more easier to implement. And we do find that we are now coming up with very smart solutions to provide reliable power. And mind you, there are two things, which is very important, reliability of power. And the second is the affordability of power. We find that renewable power, if we do a hybrid solution of solar and wind, where solar is during daytime and wind is during evening and nighttime, and with battery storage, with pump storage, hydropower, on a combined basis, we do have a good solution. Of course, in power, we also talk about resilience, so that there is a backup. For the time being, we will have a backup with the existing coal. But I think over a period of time, when we get into some of the other new solutions, especially nuclear and the small modular nuclear reactors, we possibly will have a much cleaner and a much lower cost solution. So I think we thought about it, we deliberated, and we took a conscious decision that this is the right way to move forward and get ready for next hundred years if we really want to see a difference in the way the energy is being produced and used in the country.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Vikram, did you have something you wanted to say about that?
VIKRAM GANDHI: I think Dr. Sinha just talked about a hundred years. I mean, I think let’s not maybe go a hundred years but maybe just go 25. But even someone like Tata Power, when they talk about a quarter, I mean while they have to be in India and elsewhere, you have to have quarterly earnings and everything else, is that when you’re talking about a quarter, I mean, Tata Power is thinking about not the next 90 days, but it’s thinking about 25 years. And I think that’s where the leadership really comes in. I think maybe a question for Dr. Sinha from my standpoint is that, though, I do hear from investors that: Why would Tata Power not take advantage of buying distressed thermal assets, turning them around and generating high profitability in the near term, which can then be invested in new technologies and renewables? And I would just be curious to know as to what you would say to that question.
PRAVEER SINHA: So it’s not that we did not take one of the stressed assets. We did take one of the stressed assets way back in 2020 and turned it around. But we also took the opportunity that there is an alternate way of producing power, and ultimately, it is the similar type of returns that they would give you, and why unnecessarily go a route which can become a challenge in the next 20 years or 30 years when we will have the carbon tax and some of the other restrictions that may be imposed. I think this was not about just making money, but it was also about making money with responsibility. And I think sometimes there is a sacrifice, there is a price that you pay, but I can tell you that whatever we have done, we see results are much better. And today, the growth trajectory that we have and the opportunity that we have, we feel that we did the right thing.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Vikram, I’ll come back to you on this one. Dr. Sinha is making this sound easier than it probably is, right? They’re working hard, things are going well, but they can’t do this in a vacuum even as influential as Tata Power is within India. There are regulations and other kinds of systemic hurdles that they have to be able to overcome to do what they’re trying to do. What does the case teach us about how you should try to align that corporate ambition, understanding that there are systemic constraints that you’re going to face, and you have to be able to deal with those as well?
VIKRAM GANDHI: I think the way to think about that, Brian, is really to think about who are your stakeholders. And I get back to one of the Harvard Business School case courses that I teach in the first year in the required course on leadership and corporate accountability where companies basically have four stakeholders, your investors, your customers, your employees, and the community in which you operate. And I think Tata Power actually is a fantastic example as to how they’ve been able to balance the interaction. Dr. Sinha is in Delhi right now because the community, the regulation, and the government is a really key stakeholder here. As you rightfully say, Tata Power can’t operate in a vacuum, but I think it’s a combination of convincing investors that then long-term regulation is going to come about regardless of what happens in the next couple of years, but regulation will come about because it’s imperative. So therefore, getting ahead of regulation is important, and therefore, thinking about the long term is important from an investor perspective.
From a customer perspective, too, ultimately, a lot of … For example, if you take the hard to abate sectors like steel and cement, a huge part of their emissions are because they’re buying fossil fuel-based energy. And so for them to actually be buying renewable energy reduces their carbon intensity immensely. And this applies to agriculture and other areas as well. And Dr. Sinha can maybe talk about the microgrids and the distributed solar that Tata Power is doing in the rural areas. So there’s that. So there’s the customer piece.
I think employees, and I see this in my HBS classes, I mean, younger people, younger folks, who are the next generation or two generations behind me, think about these issues in a much more progressive manner than what people in my generation think about because it’s going to impact them a lot more. For me, yes, there will be negative impact. For you and Dr. Sinha, there may be some negative impact, but the really negative impact of climate change is going to happen in some partly in the next generation, but seriously in two generations from now.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
VIKRAM GANDHI: And so I find my students who are future employees of energy companies are thinking about this and actually focusing on it. So I think if you think about how Tata Power is managing this, and maybe Dr. Sinha can comment about how he manages the balance between these four stakeholders, because, as you rightfully say, you can’t just operate in a vacuum. And India has a growth agenda. India has a development agenda. India needs to provide better and cheaper power to its people. It’s a democracy, and ultimately, politics matters a lot.
And so therefore, every five years, there’s an election both at the national level as well as at the state level. And so therefore, how you balance that between the climate and the growth agenda is really critical from a government standpoint.
BRIAN KENNY: Dr. Sinha, what do you think about that?
PRAVEER SINHA: So I think you need to allocate your resources in such a way that there is a good balance between what is required now and what will be required in the future. Also, you need to train your people. Today, people have been trained in certain skill sets and that will undergo certain changes, not that it will go full transformation, but you need to customize their training programs in such a way that they’re ready to handle the new set of requirements. So I think it’s a virtual delicate balancing act that one needs to do. And we have been trying to do that in each of our businesses, where we transition from one set of work to the new set of work, whether it is in the smart grid space where smart metering and SCADA systems have come in, or it is in our existing generation plants where many of the digital technology has come in, and how the flow of electrons and the flow of data is being managed in a smarter way.
VIKRAM GANDHI: And Brian, I’d just like maybe build on one thing that Dr. Sinha just said, and I think this is a huge opportunity just for the broader energy transition space and Tata Power is already taking the lead in some of these areas, is how do we actually incorporate digitization and artificial intelligence in actually increasing the efficiency of both power generation, power transmission, and power usage. And I think their leadership, and that’s something we talk about that a little bit in the case, their leadership and the smart grid infrastructure, where essentially an AI, I think, can be a huge element when people talk about AI, both on a positive and negative things as to what the concerns could be about AI. But I think one of the big positives is how can you use actually artificial intelligence to increase the efficiency of energy generation, transmission, and distribution.
BRIAN KENNY: I don’t think there’s a podcast that we’ve done in the last year that doesn’t mention AI in some respects, so it certainly is a huge driving force in business. Another tension that I’m thinking about, as Dr. Sinha was just responding to that, is this tension between profits and purpose. I think a lot of people look at net-zero emissions goals as this altruistic thing that organizations are doing, but if you could talk a little bit, Vikram, about how you balance this from a … If you’re trying to convince your investors and your shareholders about why it’s important to do this, what’s the argument that you would make?
VIKRAM GANDHI: I think it gets back to the argument of short term versus long term, Brian, and then Dr. Sinha can build on this a little bit, but I’ve seen this, and let’s take as an example, some of the energy companies in Europe. The ones that have actually been aggressive in moving away from fossil fuel-based energy generation to renewable-based energy generation. And there have been some concerns recently, and some, I would say, calamities actually in Spain, and Portugal, and other places where the overreliance on maybe renewables without the appropriate storage infrastructure probably caused these blackouts, which created huge problems in those countries. Ultimately, if you think about investors, let’s focus on that as the stakeholder here, is that ultimately your share price is a function of two things. One is, what are your earnings? And the other is, what are your earnings multiple, your P/E ratio, which is a reflection of growth and reflection of risk-adjusted growth. And I think more and more investors, one of my clients, and I’ve written a case for my sustainable investing class on the Canadian Pension Plan, they’re one of the largest pension plans in the world. They have $700 billion under management. And essentially, from their perspective, they are actually investing in companies that are maybe fossil-fuel-based companies today. In fact, the case focuses on them investing in an oil and gas company in California where their capital is being used to accelerate the transition because you get ahead of the curve. You get ahead of the curve because regulation will come, investors will come, there’s this whole issue of assets which will not be used. I mean, a lot of the oil and gas companies, one of the negatives on them, at least the argument, is that a lot of their reserves are valued, that they would actually be exploited, and they probably won’t be because you’ll move to renewables by then. And so I think the way they manage the tension is really thinking about the long term. So one of the biggest shareholders of Tata Power is Tata Sons, which is the main holding company. And Tata Sons, as Dr. Sinha says, talks about a hundred years.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
VIKRAM GANDHI: So I’m only talking about 25. And so, therefore, investors who buy into that long-term strategy are the ones that are buying into the stock. And if you look at the valuation of the stock, it’s the earnings and it’s the P/E ratio. And what I found in some of our research on energy companies in Europe is that while in the near term, your earnings may get depressed because you’re investing in technologies and new areas, the P/E ratio actually expands, and those stocks have actually done better because the P/E ratios are higher. Ultimately investors understand that long-term climate change has a huge negative impact on their valuation of their assets, on the underlying value of the assets, and therefore, getting ahead of the curve is pretty critical.
BRIAN KENNY: Dr. Sinha, is that something that you’ve been up against? Have you had people questioning what you’re doing?
PRAVEER SINHA: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we talk of energy transition. It’s not that we are doing the change tomorrow or the day after. Our existing assets will be there. They will continue to be the cash cows of the company and it will support the new growth that we are planning to have. And then once those come on stream and they start stabilizing and kicking in, they will generate that much additional cash and you will have that much more money for future growth. So I think it’s a question of doing it right, timing it right, and delivering it. And I think as a company, we have a very good track record of implementing and delivering. We set up a large manufacturing plant for solar cells and modules, commissioned it in record time, in 12 months, the module, and 24 months, the cell plant, which I think is helping us to grow and deliver much better results. So I think the shareholders are looking at all these things and looking at how the company is implementing their new projects and how they continue to operate well their existing assets, so that we don’t have a challenge of our cash flow.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, yeah. We’ve talked about AI and the benefits and potential challenges that it poses in this respect, but we haven’t talked about people and how you bring people along. And the case does talk about this with Project Daksh that you are doing. Can you talk a little bit, Dr. Sinha, about how you’re retraining people, reskilling people, to be able to thrive in this new world?
PRAVEER SINHA: Absolutely. So everyone undergoes that program. And just to give you an idea, when we automated our grades, we had 500 people who were out of the existing job that they were doing. And we had to retrain all the 500 people because they knew the job, they knew how the network operates, and they moved towards our GIS and some of the other areas of work. So I think it’s a question of, how do you retrain them? Similarly, when we went into data analytics, and now we are getting into agentic AI, how do you train people? How do you retrain them so that they are able to learn new skill sets and utilize it? When we set up the renewable plants, we send people, our operators from our existing coal-based and hydro-based plants, where the normal operations or availability is 99.9%, and they brought the same rigor and work it takes in operating the renewable plant. So I think there is learning everywhere. And I think one of the unique things about Tata Power has been that we have a very strong workforce. We have people who join and superannuate from there after working for 30, 40 years. We have two generation employees, three generations. So I think the understanding that there is a job security, but you will have to learn the new skill sets to become ready for the new work environment.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And you’re not the only firm, obviously, that’s dealing with this. Vikram, you look at a lot of different organizations in different sectors. The challenge of reskilling people to be able to continue to not just survive but thrive in this new world is real.
VIKRAM GANDHI: It’s absolutely real. And quite honestly, Brian, I don’t know what the right answer is. It’s one thing to be able to reskill people who are in their 20s and 30s. When someone’s in their 40s and 50s, it actually becomes a lot bigger of a challenge. I’ve seen various examples, especially in chip production or production around renewable infrastructure and charging infrastructure, where foreign companies that have committed to invest huge amounts of money into the US as part of the new deal with the new administration, if you will, has been challenging to actually find the right people and train them to deliver. And so I wish I knew what the answer was. I think AI is going to create … People are obviously very concerned about the fact that AI will, and particularly in the energy transition area, as Dr. Sinha said, create massive amounts of unemployment, things like that. I think it’ll also create huge amounts of opportunity. I mean, I emphasize to my students. And that’s why we, in fact, launched this new course, which Tata Power has been hugely supportive of. The students go and see Tata Power’s thermal plant, which was in the suburbs of Mumbai when it was set up right now because the growth of the city is right in the heart of Mumbai, and it’s a thermal coal plant, which is supplying energy to Mumbai. And what is Tata Power doing? It can’t just shut that plant down and start a renewable thing, but what is it doing for transition?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.
VIKRAM GANDHI: So I think there is a huge opportunity in energy transition, whether it be in the space that Tata Power operates in or generally in other areas as well. And the way companies and leadership of companies, boards, and senior management grapple with that will separate the winners from the losers.
BRIAN KENNY: Dr. Sinha, I want to talk about your customers for a second because we’ve talked about your employees and your shareholders. We haven’t talked about the customers. And the case describes Tata Power as a solutions provider rather than just a utility. But my guess is, at the end of the day, people just want their lights to go on. They want to make sure that there’s a source for their energy. Are you trying to bring your customers along in this journey and educate them a little bit about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and how it will benefit not just them, but maybe their children and their children’s children?
PRAVEER SINHA: Absolutely right. And this is a new concept that has started. Earlier, it used to be just supplying electricity, but there is now … With smart metering and some of the other digital technology, you can directly interact with the customers. And today, now customers are becoming a participant in the energy supply and energy consumption. Just to give you example, now we do a lot of work on rooftop solar whereby your customers set up these rooftops and they produce electricity, use themselves, and give it to the grid. We also have a large number of programs where customers are now participating in the demand side. So they use air conditioners, which are smart air conditioners and use less energy. There are customers who now say that, “I would like to have only green power, so there’s a choice that I’ll pay this much and I will get only green power for my requirement.” So a whole lot of customer interface takes place now. And that’s where, again, the reskilling had to be done. Earlier, it was a monopolistic, you supply electricity, you get a bill at the end of the month. Here, you now know on a daily basis how much is your consumption with this present consumption pattern. What will it be at the end of the month? Will you like to take clean energy solutions during certain hours of the day? And I think these are the new concepts that we are coming up with. Customers are delighted that they are getting to be a participant rather than just a receiver of energy. They also feel that they are now becoming prosumers, producers and consumers of electricity. And the whole democratization of energy that is taking place is really in play. And I think that is the biggest change that I see in the way now we produce power and supply to the consumers.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, that’s a theme that I think we’ve seen playing out in other parts of the world, too. It’s certainly happening here in the US. Vikram, let me just ask you, is this way of engaging customers and making them part of the solution, making them feel like they’re part of a movement, this is a little bit of the millennial generation has shown that they want to be aligned with brands and organizations that are doing things that they think are having a positive impact in the world. Do you see this as a positive branding step for Tata Power?
VIKRAM GANDHI: I do. I do. And I think it’s very important to distinguish between, like Dr. Sinha said earlier in the podcast, about not just saying things but actually acting and executing on it. And I think this whole area of greenwashing, which has been talked about a lot, is actually a real issue. A lot of companies have talked about net zero, and it’s just about putting out an environmental report and a sustainable report without actually following it up with serious action. And I think investors, and employees, and others are starting to see through that. More and more millennials and others are believing that this is the right thing to do from not just a societal perspective, but from a commercial perspective. And I think that’s what we try and emphasize pretty strongly at HBS in the MBA program.
BRIAN KENNY: This has been a great conversation. I knew it would be. We’re coming close to the end of our time, though, so I’ve got one question left for each of you. And I will give Vikram the last word since he’s the HBS faculty member. They always like to have the last word.
VIKRAM GANDHI: Oh, no. The protagonists are the most important here, not the faculty.
BRIAN KENNY: We’ll start with you, Dr. Sinha. And this is a pretty common question, but I think a really important one. As you think about maybe not even 25 years into the future, but just five years into the future, what are the things that keep you up at night a little bit when you’re worried about potential outcomes? And what are the things that you see as great opportunities for Tata Power?
PRAVEER SINHA: I think the technology change, which is happening, that will be a big thing. We will see disruptions in the way the solar cells and modules are being manufactured. We will also see a lot of disruptions in the battery, in the storage area. We may have other chemistries. I do see that we’ll have definitely small modular reactors, not only nuclear fission, but nuclear fusion might happen. So a lot of technology changes I do expect. On the customer side also, I feel that like you have the mobile services, the telecom service providers, you’ll have multiple service providers for electricity, and you can have the access of using energy the way you use your mobile or any other e-solutions that you have. Your EV charging will become very, very different. You can charge from the grid and you can also give it back to the grid. You can sell to the grid during certain hours, so the vehicle to grid will happen. So I think you can see lot of disruptions that will happen, and that’s what is exciting, but also a little worrying, but I’m enjoying the new changes.
BRIAN KENNY: That’s great. Vikram, I’ll give you the last word here. If there is one thing that you would like our listeners to remember about the Tata Power case, what would it be?
VIKRAM GANDHI: I think the one thing I would say is that Tata Power is an example of a company where essentially energy transition is a huge opportunity and a huge value-creating opportunity. I think people always talk about climate as a risk, which it clearly is, and it’s a risk that needs to be managed. But I also think that energy transition, and again, I talk about transition like Dr. Sinha said, say the next five to 25 years, is a massive opportunity. I mean, the entire hundred years of growth that has happened in the West and even in developing countries has been based on carbonizing the world. And now there’s a massive opportunity of decarbonizing the world. And Tata Power, I think, is an example of that, which is taking the lead in it. There clearly are lots of challenges, as Dr. Sinha just identified. I mean, ultimately, when you’re looking at a whole new world out there is how you allocate capital is a critical decision. Both, as Dr. Sinha said, it’s exciting, but at the same time, concerning. How do you allocate between keeping your base load factor versus renewables? How do you allocate between different technologies? How do you allocate in terms of training people and reskilling people? I think Tata Power is a really great example of how can this energy transition be really viewed as from the lens of a massive opportunity to create value for all your stakeholders over a long period of time.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And that is a great note to end on. Dr. Praveer Sinha, Vikram Gandhi, thank you for joining me on Cold Call.
VIKRAM GANDHI: Thank you, Brian. It was a pleasure.
RAVEER SINHA: Thank you, Brian, and thank you, Vikram. Such a pleasure.
BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts: Climate Rising, Coaching Real Leaders, IdeaCast, Managing the Future of Work, Skydeck, and Think Big, Buy Small. Find them wherever you get your podcasts.
If you have any suggestions or just want to say hello, we want to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Thanks again for joining us. I’m your host Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School and part of the HBR Podcast Network.
