Suzlon Group founder and CMD, Tulsi Tanti, died of cardiac arrest in Pune on Saturday. Earlier in the day, during an exclusive interview to businessline in Ahmedabad, Tanti had expressed his optimism about new vistas being explored by India in the areas of renewable energy and how his company, Suzlon Energy, will be back on its feet after having two decades of financial turbulence.
In a candid Gujarati interaction, Tanti, a first-generation entrepreneur shared his insights on and challenges in realising India’s target of 140 GW of wind energy generation capacities by 2030. Land availability being a structural problem, finance will also be one of the concerns. Tanti believed that India has achieved 60 GW out of the targeted, and the remaining is to be done in the next eight years. “This means, about 10 GW each year against 2 GW that we are adding currently. There is a big challenge to increase the wind capacities by 5x and keep it sustained for the next eight years,” he said.
However, Tanti expressed optimism over the easing of land issues, the changing perception of lenders towards the sector, and also for the company, a steep reduction in debt — from ₹13,000 crore to about ₹2,800 crore now — that will keep the confidence of investors and shareholders intact.
“I don’t ask you to propagate anything. But try to popularise renewable as much as possible. Only then our future generations will survive. This is immensely necessary. We, at Suzlon, are doing it with this mission; money will come and go,” Tanti said before signing off.