Inderpreet Wadhwa’s mega-watt smile is well-deserved. In the past six years, his company Azure Power, a solar power producer, has more than found its place in the sun with an installed capacity of 54.5MW across its projects in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab. In these five years, they have also more than halved the cost of solar power.  

The solar industry in India has seen a lot of action in the past few years, thanks to the push by the National Solar Mission. But, if you look closely, a lot of players in the solar infrastructure space right now are large conglomerates. They are doing solar because they can make a certain percentage of return. Tomorrow, if that return can come from wind, biomass, thermal, or even soap manufacturing, they would probably go do that.  Azure Power is the only company that has imbibed the principle of low cost clean energy as our core. Our mission is that—to be the lowest-cost power producer in the world.  Every year, we have brought the cost of solar power down. Our first project in Awan, Punjab which was operationalised in 2009 generated power at Rs17 per unit. The price per unit is Rs7.49 at our most recent project in Kathauti, Rajasthan.

But, that hasn’t been our only focus—inclusive growth is our guiding mandate as well. So, in terms of land, we decided that we’re not going to look for premium land which has 20 other alternative uses. We looked for worst-possible land, and turned it into a productive unit. Second, we didn’t try to acquire the land, we leased it. In the leased mode, the owners feel part of the project because they are also making annual cash flows. We also work with the local community right from the beginning. We tell them that we are going to create both permanent and temporary jobs. This twin approach has worked well. We can operationalise projects in six months’ time. And because  we  work on a SaaS (solar as a service model where we operate and maintain the plants) model, the quick timelines don’t mean we cut corners. We have to run these plants. We do it right the first time.  

We’re now expanding into other areas of opportunity. We recently won an award by the World Bank for our project in Gandhinagar where we’ve taken 250 roofs to install solar panels. We’ve turned the city of Gandhinagar into a solar power generator. In April 2013, Solar Energy Corporation of India asked us to put up rooftop 0.5 MW (total) solar power projects in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Gurgaon each. It’s a very small beginning but has a huge future. Solar is the only clean energy option available in cities. And, it’s already almost the same price as per unit of coal power. BSES gives power at Rs7.25 per unit in Delhi.  We’re also developing micro grids in rural areas. That’s bound to have a huge impact. Almost 400 million people are not connected to the grid in India right now. 

I don’t see myself as some do-gooder. Social entrepreneurship is an overly used word in India. I shy away from it. Our bottom line is driven by “socio-economic” profit maximisation, not revenue maximisation. We’ve imbibed being responsible from the word go—we implement solar street lighting and rainwater harvesting at our sites. All our projects are water positive. Hopefully, by  their seventh year, each project will be energy positive also. So far, we’ve offset 83,719,419 kWh of energy, and 63,404,432 kgs of carbon. I hope we can begin to include these metrics in our P&L statements. I’ve been working with KPMG’s International Practice out of Netherlands where they are trying to come up with some international benchmarks on how you measure and track your energy usage. I think every company should work towards mitigating their environmental impact.