Energetica India Magazine May - June 2026

Hiren Pravin Shah: E-trucks will become an important part of India’s decarbonisation story because freight is one of the hardest segments to clean up and one of the most import- ant. NITI Aayog’s zero-emission trucking work notes that trucking accounts for about one-third of transport-related CO 2 emissions in India, and that annual truck emissions could reach 800 million tonnes by 2050 if the sector stays on its current path. The same analysis says widespread zero-emission truck adop- tion could reduce CO 2 emissions by 46 percent by 2050, with 2.8-3.8 gigatonnes of cumulative savings. Policy is also begin- ning to move in support of this shift, with PM E-DRIVE now covering N2 and N3 e-trucks and providing incentives linked to battery size, ex-factory price, and gross vehicle weight. Q Which segment between utility-scale and C&I offers the most growth potential going forward? Hiren Pravin Shah: If we are looking at the next wave of scale, utility, and grid-linked storage will likely account for the largest capacity additions. The national projections them- selves make that clear. When the country is planning for stor- age in the tens and then hundreds of gigawatt-hours, utili- ty-scale and grid-support applications will naturally become major growth engines. That said, I would not underestimate the C&I opportunity. Commercial and industrial customers are becoming more sophisticated in the way they think about energy reliability, renewable optimisation, and peak demand management. So the answer is not either-or. Utility-scale will likely drive the biggest volumes, while C&I will remain a very meaningful commercial segment. Q From a leadership standpoint, what has been your biggest learning in scaling a clean energy business? Hiren Pravin Shah: The biggest learning has been that scale in clean energy has to be earned. It is not enough to add ca- pacity or move quickly because these solutions operate in de- manding environments, where safety, uptime and consistency matter every day. Customers are not looking at a battery or a storage system as a one-time purchase. They are looking at how it performs across seasons, duty cycles and years of use. For us, R&D is a central part of scaling the business. Whether we are working on energy storage systems or e-mobility solu- tions, each application brings its own technical requirements. The chemistry, pack design, BMS, EMS, thermal behaviour, testing protocols and service model all have to work together. Our focus has therefore been on building scale with engineer- ing depth, product validation and lifecycle reliability, rather than treating growth only as a manufacturing target. INTERVIEW energetica INDIA- May-June_2026 23