Leadership

Deepak Gupta belongs to the 1974 batch of the IAS. BA from Allahabad University (topper), MA History from St. Stephen’s College (2nd Position), M Phil from School of International Studies, JNU and MPA from Kennedy School, Harvard University as Mason Fellow.

He served for 39 years in many departments in centre and state including a posting as Jute and Coir Advisor in the ITC Brussels, spent 9 years in Health including a year as Advisor, WHO Delhi for the TB programme for a year. He retired as Secretary, MNRE September 2011 where he initiated the National Solar Mission. He was also Chairman of the UPSC from November 2014 to September 2016.

He has written following books - Participatory Irrigation Management (2000), Tuberculosis Programme in India (2004), Achieving Universal Energy Access in India (2015), together with brothers and sister, biography of his IP father, Anandswarup Gupta, Caught by the Police (2015), The Steel Frame: A history of the IAS (2019), and memoirs titled Small Things Matter – Key to Good Governance (2021).

After retirement he has consulted with World Bank, UNIDO etc; speaks and writes about energy, climate change and governance issues. He is a member of the independent commission on health and has produced several field reports on TB and kala azar and also a report on Panchayats and health.

Publication

Mr. Shah brings with him rich expertise of three decades in various roles across the value chain of India’s Renewable Energy ecosystem including Solar, Wind, Storage, Manufacturing, Financing, R&D and Policy formulation. In his previous role, as Director (Technical) at Indian Renewable Development Agency (IREDA), he led the mission for achieving MOU Targets pertaining to Loan Sanctions, Disbursement, Gross Margin, Gross Sales, NPAs, Recovery from NPAs, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainable Development, Research and Development etc. He has also spearheaded multiple projects for appraisal, financing, policy formulation, planning and monitoring of Renewable Energy Projects of Wind, Small Hydro, Medium and Large Hydro, Biomass, Cogeneration, Solar Energy, Biogas, Waste to Energy and Energy Efficiency Projects.

Prior to joining IREDA, he was the President at SUZLON Group of Companies. He started his career from TERI as Research Associate in the year 1996 and left TERI in 2001 He joined SUZLON as General Manager in the year 2001. He worked as President with SUZLON till February, 2018 before joining IREDA as the Director (Technical).

An Energy sector professional with around 18 years’ experience across IPPs, International RE Developers, Investment firms and Research/Advocacy organizations. He is experienced in driving new business models in India’s RE sector based on integration of complementary RE technologies with energy storage for providing Schedulable/Round-the-clock RE power and energy storage services. He has a sound track-record of driving inorganic growth by acquiring RE pipeline/projects across India.

Apart from his great experience in solar energy projects he carried well-networked with stakeholders in the energy space in India and other South Asian countries. Along with that he is working with several Government/Industry task forces, committees and working groups.

Mr. K. Ravi Kumar Reddy is the Chairman and Managing Director of Axis Energy Group. He is a first-generation entrepreneur who has defined success through his experience of over two decades in large scale infrastructure and power projects. He has also ventured and tasted success in other business sectors like transportation and mining.

He is best known for his entrepreneurial skills in the Renewable Energy industry since the very beginning and is one of the first RE developers to visualize the importance of blending of various sources of power to smoothen the power curve and to overcome the vagaries of solar and wind generations basis which he has conceived the Bundling Banking and Balancing (BBB) scheme which was accepted as a feasible solution and was allowed to be implemented as a pilot project. He is also equally renowned in the mobility industry for being the first to visualize and implement the operating lease model of buses to Bangalore Metropolitan Corporation (BMTC) on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode in the year 1997 making it the first of its kind in the public transport industry.

He is a well-grounded and a versatile personality who thinks beyond the company and always aims at intensifying the concept of sustainable and over all eco-friendly development and promote the renewable energy sector. He is the Chairman of ASSOCHAM, Telangana, trustee member of NSEFI, President AP and TS chapters of IWPA, an active member of the CII, WIPPA and IWTMA. He has been part of many policy initiatives favoring the RE sector at the Central and State levels and has been instrumental in relentlessly pursuing with the governments at both the national and the state’s level for resolving some of the long pending issues detrimental to the growth of the RE industry.

His vision to reduce the carbon footprint and to provide a better environment for our future generations started taking shape through the renewable energy and clean mobility projects of Axis Energy Group. His vision and his ideas not only impressed various sectors in our nation, but it has also attracted partnerships and collaborations. The strategic partnership with Suzlon is key partnership by virtue of which a large wind capacity of over 1.2GW was added to the grid in the year 2016-18.

Yet another key collaboration is the strategic alliance with Brookfield, one of the world’s largest asset management companies for building utility scale RE projects which is on a successful path of developing the projects. Mr. Ravi Kumar Reddy in his earlier stint of Road Construction Projects has joined hands with Malaysian MNCs for National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) and Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) on a G-to-G (Government to Government) basis.

Mr. Ravi Kumar Reddy is a strong believer of the importance of the RE sector has as a part of the energy transition plans for the country and is committed to be a part of this transition and the great future of the RE sector in the country. Under his chairmanship NSEFI is sure to grow leaps and bounds and contribute in a big way to the Sustainability goals of the country.