Transcript

Building sustainable infrastructure with inclusive growth: Inderpreet Singh Wadhwa at TEDxLeh

[Music] It's actually an honor to be on a tedex stock uh for me personally it's uh great to be in the company of such uh accomplished speakers and individuals uh in in ladak as Paris mentioned this is my first uh trip to uh ladak it has been very insightful for me um on a on a variety of fronts personal professional um and I would like to share uh a little bit about uh the work I do and my life I think I can't draw the line between my my work and life I think it's very blurred and it's all together but before I talk about what I do and and what made me do what I do I was making a few notes uh when others were speaking and you know I was very touched by some of the things that guruji said I thought it would be important to just add a little bit to that he mentioned that human life is incomplete without spirituality and meditation I think it's also incomplete without Compassion or the ability to touch the lives of others I think it's a very important thing for for all of us to do as we uh you know live every day uh and not in isolation not in an island we live uh in communities and then we must touch as many lives as we can in those communities to be complete uh to be completely human uh so to speak uh and that's something I do every day um um Reverend guran you you posed a question how to get power in the evening I think I can help you with that um that's what AZ your power does make sure that you get power when you need it uh today people are talking about it's a hot day drinking enough water I think it's a perfect day to generate solo power so so I think those are the sort of benefits of of solar um and then you know really getting on to what Stephanie talked about was uh some level of moderation on consumption so I was born in India in Punjab um studied engineering from Punjab then went on to uh work in Silicon Valley in um software sector built several software businesses there and I got sort of involved in that consumption cycle when I first moved uh to us I had two suitcases moved into a one-bedroom apartment then bought a single family home with three rooms then bought two homes then bought a mansion it was interesting that guruji was saying I had all those features in my bathroom in California and uh and didn't have the time to sit on the couch or or enjoy the shower um I I lived there for over 10 years and uh one of the trips back in in in India in New Delhi I was disturbed by looking at a lot of little kids at every stoplight asking for money or asking for food now I can always you know take some money out or whatever I meeting share with them but it bothered me a lot and I said what I'm doing is not sustainable so what can I do to help these children so I I spent a little bit of time sort of researching and thinking about why these kids are on the street and one answer always came back to me is that there wasn't enough employment in rural communities where their families are from and hence they migrate to cities look for job and use kids for begging as as a profession right I mean like uh so what if what if we create a business opportunity I mean I didn't want to do an NGO I mean there plenty of NGS doing phenomenal work all over the country I wanted to create a sustainable business model that would impact the lives of these individuals in a direct manner so it was very clear to me that whatever I do must happen in rural India not in New Delhi not in Mumbai it must happen in farflung areas in rural places in the world so now what possibly could that that opportunity be and that is when I I started a your power a your power is one of India's uh leading independent power producer only based on solar energy we get into long-term contracts for sale of solar energy at fixed price for 25 years there is no other energy provider on the planet that can give you a fixed price for 25 years I mean you buy power from Hydro projects or thermal projects and they always have a variability component in their contracts what if the price of coal goes up what if the inflation goes up so they're all adjusted to inflation so this is one source of energy that is not going to inflate because the sun's going to shine every day and no one's charging us for the sun to come up every morning so it is a phenomenal resource to tap so with that premise I started this company uh we have uh almost uh 110 megawatt which is one of the largest portfolios of solar projects in the country today uh these are operational in five uh different states um punab in Rajasthan in Karnataka um Gujarat and utar Pradesh um we intend to continue build and develop more of these projects but the key difference in what I do versus other energy companies do is inclusive growth and by inclusive growth I first understand all the stakeholders in the project so who are my stakeholders who are my customers what do they need which are the communities where I'm going to build these projects what are their needs who are my investors what are their needs who are my suppliers what are their needs so we buy a lot of equipment and raise a lot of capital in us because of of my us background but all the energy is produced and delivered in India it's a great way to bridge the two countries on a inclusive growth model to give you a couple of example what it means for local communities most of the infrastructure projects in India get delayed because the companies that are doing those infrastructure projects will never keep the interest of local communities in their mind they are so focused on financial returns that I want to maximize my profit I must not pay market price of land I must not pay market price for everything how much can I squeeze from the other counterparty that I'm working with we do it completely differently we sit down with the communities before we start a project we tell them look I mean I'll give you an example our first project is running in a village called aan which is about 10 km from the Pakistan Border in the state of Punjab Northern Punjab so there's absolutely no industry there primarily an Agri carian community and they get power for maybe 2 to 3 hours from a hydral project which is 300 km away so by the time the power comes to the tail end of this grid it has very poor voltage and frequency and often the power trips so it is inter intermittent power supply even though they're connected so with that Community we said we want to do this 32 Villages were connected to a distribution station we do 2 Mega solar plant we give you 8 hours of uninterrupted power supply and we improve the quality of the power that you're getting and you do all your farming are you interested yes okay but how will it work I said we would like you to give us land so we can build a project on that land how much land do you need we need 10 acres of land how much will you pay I said we don't want to buy it it's your land you keep what do you do with this land nothing one year we might try to do some farming it's mostly waste it's lying idle and even if we do some farming we make about 5 to 6,000 rupees an acre a year I said we'll give you 20,000 rupes an acre a year are you serious four times of what we are making I said not only that we'll give you 3 years cash up front so you can use that money to build a school or improve the drainage or the infrastructure or the roads in your in your community I mean these guys couldn't believe who this guy is and what the hell is he talking about it makes no sense whatsoever right um then we Implement things like rainwater harvesting we develop the infrastructure around the area we start little bit of you know education of the children in the community tell them what clean energy is all about and we create construction jobs this year that we finished in in March we created two ,000 jobs 2,000 jobs in rural India 2,000 jobs so at least those 2,000 families will not send their kids to New Delhi street lights to back so this is a sustainable infrastructure development with inclusive growth which I have not seen any other company focus on in India so this is great for the community is excellent you know we pay our suppliers well we buy you know we have a lot of Ethics we don't bribe anybody we do things the right way but at the end of the day what does this mean you know it's not an NG it's not a nonprofit are we profitable do we do all the right things are we going to rule the world so this is U I just have one slide so this is the research I did when I started the business and um if you see what you see is the blue line is the selling price of power for our company company that we can sell power and you have the years at the bottom and you have the uh rupee per unit or per kilowatt hour on the other axis so when I started the business you know we're looking at one of our earlier projects we were selling power at 18 rupees a unit and people said you guys are crazy who's going to pay 18 rupees for power so I actually came up with the with a new version of Moors law so some people in the room are familiar with Mo's law we we all have computers in our phones now and you know in ' 70s you need really big rooms to put the same computer in the same technology Works in solar photo voltage so my theory is very similar that every year the solar technology will get 5% more efficient and 5% more cheaper only a handful of people believed in me in like 2009 I raised some money and started the company but most of the people were saying this is not going to work you'll be out of business in 2 years because I can buy diesel at 10 Rupees a unit I can you know get power from the Grid at 7 rupees and guess what you know I can buy Power from large coal plants at 4 rupees a Kow hour I said fine you can do that today but can you have them guaranteed for 25 years oh who's seen 25 years so anyhow in 2011 I started selling power at about 14 rupees a unit and Diesel went to 11 and Commercial tariff at 8 and Co is still around 4 2012 I start selling at 8 and now guess what diesel is at 11 so all the shopping malls all over the country want to buy solar power because they save money and we have a commercial contract pan India with one of the largest real estate developer and we are doing solar power on all their roofs all over India and it's got no subsidies no feeding tariffs it's a pure economic decision okay so that's interesting but now what happens in 2013 New Delhi increases its Tariff of great power by 25% because the government has to manage its current account deficit they are not going to subsidize Diesel and coal anymore because we all know what the outcome of that is or that has been so anyone that understands the economics knows it cannot continue forever it's a balance sheet you know you spend more money than you have in the bank you go bankrupt India is not willing to go bankrupt so they are increasing prices of these Commodities so now what happens in 2013 I'm selling at 7 rupees my Mor law theory is still applying and now guess what I'm making even more profits than my counterparts so this is where we are 2013 it has been a phenomenal ride from 2010 to 2013 but I'm being very modest from here on a 5% reduction on my tariff and by the way these These are not my costs these are my selling price I actually do make some money we've done 100 crores in Revenue this year about 20 million in revenues this year and we've invested about 1,000 crores that's about 200 million uh I don't think any other large infrastructure company can claim that they've done 1,000 CR in solar uh in India today uh so so this is all real this is not like one project or you know one little experiment here this is like real money real investors real products real plants so by 2017 I can actually bid for umpp projects I can go head-to-head with any Energy company in this country and win purely on price I think that's a great business and guess what don't forget the sustainability that I'm doing don't forget the inclusive growth I'm doing and I'm building a profitable Venture so so that's what I do and I have zero background in infrastructure I've never worked in India before I think those kids in New Delhi uh stop lights and um a film from algo called inconvenient Tru truth had a very profound impact on me personally so if any of you watch that film at the end there are about 20 things that flash what each one of us can do you don't have to start power companies to make an impact just turn off the lights when you're not in the room car poool like one day a week ride a bicycle use less Coal Power use less diesel use less kerosene I mean on this trip in Lei I realized what little I need to survive I need a camel B with some water which is boiled in one of the villages here I need a tissue roll is very important and I need a energy bar so I don't you know die and I need D Mo so I can you know work with that and then of course you know there are a few things about sleeping tents where you sleep and all that but that's like you know uh like 10% of one room in my house is what I really need to survive so we really don't need you know 20 rooms in the house we really don't need all the things we have we don't need three cars one car is good enough if you must or share so each one of you can actually make a real impact to climate change so things like Sandy doesn't happen things like you know utarak storm doesn't happen or New Orleans doesn't happen we all must do something and we all can it's not the that hard it's not that hard I mean I'm not asking you to give up your life for you know 10 years and build as your power you all in your own ways can do something to make this a better place for the generations that are going to come forward and what it means for L actually so I the side aggression on what I all want you to think about is I think Lei has one of the best solar radiations in the world it has very few pollutants in the air that actually impacts the ability of solar generation and land is not an issue I mean there's plenty of land out there where you can build solar Farms you have a lots of hamlets um that I saw while I was trkking uh along the way all those hamlets can actually be connected and I know there's a lot of work already been done renewable uh energy watch magazine has recognized the work and and a lot of this is being done but there's a lot more that can also be done connecting these Villages together instead of giving them lamps or lanterns you can actually give them a direct connection of power the transmission lines are not going to come from that part of the country you can build microt transmission infrastructure using solar and when you have that in place use hydro in the evening displace solar can displace the energy consumption pattern because primarily you relying on hydro and I know most of the places get 5 6 7 8 hours of power when you start going out out of lay so if you have to displace that all daytime load can be met by solar most of the days and the rest you use hydro and it's just a matter of years I don't know what the tariffs are in late today but I'm not that far off from uh commercial tariffs in in a lot of places in this country so I think that's all I had to had to share thank you so much for your time [Applause]