Que: How is REPLUS positioning itself in an increasingly competitive and evolving clean energy market?

Ans: At REPLUS, our growth is anchored in two equally important priorities: energy storage systems and e-mobility solutions. As the market evolves, we believe long-term differentiation will come from building dependable, integrated systems that perform in real operating conditions. That is why our positioning is centred on engineering-led solutions, backed by advanced battery pack design, BMS and EMS capabilities, and not just product assembly.

We work across mobility and stationary applications, backed by in-house capabilities in battery management, energy management, and state-of-the-art manufacturing. That matters because customers today are looking beyond specifications. They want safety, lifecycle confidence, serviceability, and system-level performance. We operate a fully automated 1 GWh facility in Pune, scalable to 5 GWh, have deployed 100 MWh of BESS projects, and have supplied over 500 EV battery packs.

Que: Grid stability is becoming a key concern with higher renewable penetration. How do you assess India’s readiness on this front?

Ans: India is now fully aware that renewable expansion without balancing capacity will create stress in the system. So, the issue is no longer whether storage is needed, but whether deployment can keep pace with the grid’s changing requirements. The clearest sign of readiness is in national planning itself.

The CEA’s projections show a storage requirement of 16.13 GW/82.37 GWh by 2026–27, rising sharply to 73.93 GW/411.4 GWh by 2031–32. Of that, 47.24 GW/236.22 GWh is expected to come from BESS. That tells us that the policy and planning framework has moved ahead. What now matters is the speed of execution. In my view, India is directionally ready, but the next phase has to be about implementation at a meaningful scale.

Que: How do you see the economics of energy storage evolving in India in the near to medium term?

Ans: The economics are moving from being subsidy-led to value-led, and that is an important shift. Earlier, storage was often seen mainly through the lens of upfront cost. That view is changing as the grid, utilities, and industrial users begin to value flexibility, peak management, renewable integration, and resilience more seriously. You can see that in both policy design and product development.

At the national level, large projected storage requirements already point to where the market is headed. At the company level, REPLUS has moved towards larger-format BESS offerings like the RE5K, a 5.01 MWh containerised system designed with more than 10,000 cycles and a 20-year service life. As system performance improves and deployment scales, the economics will increasingly be judged by lifecycle value, not just acquisition cost.

Que: Electrification of heavy-duty transport is gaining momentum. How do you view the role of e-trucks in India’s decarbonisation journey?

Ans: 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 important. NITI Aayog’s zero-emission trucking work notes that trucking accounts for about one-third of transport-related CO₂ 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 adoption could reduce CO₂ emissions by 46 percent by 2050, with 2.8-3.8 gigatonnes of cumulative savings. Policy is also beginning 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.

Que: Which segment between utility-scale and C&I offers the most growth potential going forward?

Ans: 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 themselves make that clear. When the country is planning for storage in the tens and then hundreds of gigawatt-hours, utility-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.

Que: From a leadership standpoint, what has been your biggest learning in scaling a clean energy business?

Ans: The biggest learning has been that scale in clean energy has to be earned. It is not enough to add capacity or move quickly because these solutions operate in demanding 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 solutions, 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 engineering depth, product validation and lifecycle reliability, rather than treating growth only as a manufacturing target.