From appraising power loans to answering for a listed producer's debt

Mandate

Take the company through its listing, bring overdue utility dues under control and give the board a balance-sheet limit on growth.

Outcomes

• Led the March 2022 listing on the NSE and BSE, raising ₹1,600 Cr of fresh capital alongside a ₹1,200 Cr offer for sale.
• Cut overdue utility dues from ₹1,710 Cr to ₹180 Cr, and receivable days from 238 to 64, between 2022 and March 2026.
• Reduced net debt to EBITDA from 7.4x in March 2023 to 6.5x in March 2026 while operating capacity grew from 3.1 GW to 4.2 GW.
• Refinanced ₹8,900 Cr of project debt, including a ₹1,500 Cr ten-year rupee green bond in August 2025.
• Sold 49 per cent of a 900 MW solar cluster to Corvanne Pension Investments for ₹1,640 Cr, retaining control.

Decisions in context

I became CFO in April 2021, eleven months before our listing, with receivables already rising. The first year went on the offer document, the change-in-law disclosure and the decision not to book compensation we had not been awarded. The second was dominated by overdue dues from two state utilities and the instalment settlements that followed the 2022 rules. Since then the work has been the balance sheet: a written gearing ceiling that the board approves each year, the sale of a minority stake in an operating cluster, a rating upgrade and the refinancing of construction loans into longer rupee debt. I lead 140 people across New Delhi, Jaipur and Bengaluru, with seven direct reports, and I am a director, in an executive capacity, of our intermediate holding company and three project companies. Revenue grew from ₹2,540 crore in 2021–22 to ₹3,640 crore in 2025–26.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with the Tejovan board's consent.

Mandate

Prepare a private, family-controlled company and its twenty-eight project subsidiaries for listing.

Outcomes

• Led the restatement of three years of consolidated accounts and closed 41 audit qualifications and observations across project subsidiaries.
• Cut the quarterly consolidation from 34 to 15 working days.
• Drafted the treasury policy on currency, interest-rate and counterparty limits that the board adopted in 2020.
• Kept every project's debt service current through the 2020 lockdown, using ₹420 Cr of committed liquidity lines arranged in 2019.

Decisions in context

In July 2019 the founders decided to list within three years, and I was made deputy CFO to prepare the company. Most of the work was unglamorous. Twenty-eight project companies had been audited by four different firms using different policies, and I led the restatement of three years of consolidated accounts, closing forty-one audit qualifications and observations on the way. I rebuilt the quarterly close so that consolidation took fifteen working days instead of thirty-four, and drafted the treasury policy the board adopted in 2020. When the lockdown began in March 2020 and several utilities stopped paying for months, committed liquidity lines I had arranged the previous year kept every project's debt service current. The CFO retired in March 2021 and the board appointed me to succeed him.

Reason for the move

Appointed CFO when the incumbent retired in March 2021.

Mandate

Finance the company's move from small plants on state-set tariffs to large solar plants won in central auctions.

Outcomes

• Reached financial close on 21 project companies with ₹9,800 Cr of debt as capacity grew from 310 MW to 2.2 GW.
• Ran the 2016 minority investment process that brought in Aldermoor Infrastructure Partners with ₹1,450 Cr of equity.
• Issued a US$350 million five-year green bond in 2018 through a restricted group of eight project companies.
• Introduced a written exposure limit for each utility, accepted by the founders in 2017.

Decisions in context

I joined Tejovan in April 2014, when it was a private company with 310 megawatts of wind and solar plants selling to state utilities at tariffs set by their commissions. Central auctions for large solar plants were about to change the business, and the founders wanted to bid. My job was to finance the growth. Over five years my team reached financial close on twenty-one project companies with ₹9,800 crore of debt from banks and public-sector infrastructure lenders, and capacity grew to 2.2 gigawatts. I ran the 2016 process that brought in Aldermoor Infrastructure Partners, and in 2018 we issued a five-year dollar green bond through a restricted group of eight project companies, hedging the principal at a cost that taught me to read any coupon with suspicion. I also persuaded the founders to accept a written exposure limit for each utility after one buyer's arrears reached eight months.

Reason for the move

Promoted to deputy CFO to prepare the company for listing.

Mandate

Build a finance function able to fund a growing wind portfolio in India for a parent unfamiliar with the market.

Outcomes

• Raised ₹3,100 Cr of rupee project debt as capacity grew from 90 MW to 640 MW.
• Arranged ₹260 Cr of working-capital lines to carry a southern utility's arrears, which peaked at eleven months of billing in 2012.
• Hedged the parent-company loans within RBI's external commercial borrowing rules, avoiding losses when the rupee fell sharply in 2013.
• Claimed the generation-based incentive available to eligible wind farms, adding about ₹40 Cr a year to cash flow.

Decisions in context

Skarvholm's Indian subsidiary was small when I joined in February 2009, with 90 megawatts of wind farms and a parent in Denmark that expected India to behave like its home market. I built the finance team from four people to seventeen and raised ₹3,100 crore of rupee project debt as the portfolio grew to 640 megawatts. Tariffs were set by state commissions, which comforted the parent and did little for me, because our largest buyer, a state utility in southern India, paid later every year. At the worst point, in 2012, its arrears reached eleven months of billing. I carried them with ₹260 crore of working-capital lines and spent many evenings explaining to the group treasurer why a regulated tariff did not mean regulated cash. I also hedged the parent's loans, which mattered when the rupee fell sharply in 2013.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work for an Indian company with a growth plan in solar, and to move closer to a listed-company CFO role.

Mandate

Prepare the financing case and help syndicate debt for a coal plant selling most of its output to a state utility.

Outcomes

• Built the lenders' financial model and sensitivity cases for fuel cost, plant availability and payment delay.
• Helped reach financial close in March 2008 with 14 banks and institutions for ₹6,240 Cr.
• Negotiated the letter-of-credit and escrow terms in the plant's power purchase agreement with the state utility.

Decisions in context

I joined Dhaulagarh in June 2003 to help finance a 1,320-megawatt coal plant its promoters planned in central India. It was my first experience on the borrower's side of a data room. I built the lenders' model and its sensitivity cases, and negotiated the payment-security terms in the power purchase agreement with the state utility that would buy most of the output. Financial close came in March 2008, with ₹6,240 crore from fourteen banks and institutions. By then the plant's fuel depended on a coal linkage whose quantities were already uncertain, and my sensitivity cases looked more worrying every quarter. I raised it, was heard politely and left in January 2009 for a renewable developer, where at least the fuel had no counterparty. The plant was commissioned in 2013, and its debt was restructured five years later.

Reason for the move

Doubted the plant's fuel arrangements and wanted to work in renewable generation, where fuel was not a counterparty.

Mandate

Appraise loans to power generation and transmission projects for the credit committee.

Outcomes

• Appraised nine power projects seeking ₹5,800 Cr of debt, four of which were sanctioned.
• Built a payment-history file for each state utility, which the credit committee required with power proposals from 2001.
• Recommended against a gas-based plant whose buyer had never paid a generator on time; the committee declined it.

Decisions in context

I joined Velkaran's Mumbai office in December 1998, a month after qualifying as a chartered accountant. I spent my first eighteen months on road and port loans before moving to the power appraisal team in 2000. There I learnt to build a debt-service model and, from a senior colleague who had lent to state utilities for two decades, to read a buyer's payment record before its tariff. I turned that habit into a file for each state utility, recording how quickly it had paid generators and lenders, and from 2001 the credit committee asked for it with every power proposal. I appraised nine projects seeking ₹5,800 crore, of which four were sanctioned. One I recommended against was a gas-based plant whose buyer had never paid a generator on time. I left in 2003 to be accountable for a project's financing rather than for judging someone else's.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work for a developer and be accountable for financing a project rather than appraising it.