The late Tulsi Tanti would have been very pleased to see Suzlon 2.0.
The ambitious plan of Suzlon to grow into a well-rounded non-fossil
energy company.
Tanti had the grand plan to make Suzlon amongst the largest wind energy companies, not just running wind energy farms but becoming one of the largest manufacturers of turbines in the world. He expanded rapidly and for several years was the wonder kid of the wind energy industry. But in 2008-9 during the global financial crisis, with orders drying up from US and Europe, his debt-fuelled expansion came to a grinding halt. The purchases of Hansen, the Belgian company and REpower, the German giant, added huge manufacturing capacity, and huge debt, at the wrong time in the cycle. While once hailed as bold transformative moves, these proved to be a millstone for the company. The shares of the company which once even touched Rs455, fell to a low of Rs1.70.
With a huge debt of over Rs17,000 crore, the company was forced into debt restructuring, and a forced sale of REPower, which had been renamed as Senvion. Tanti was always pushed into raising fresh equity at a low price. But even at that time he got a significant injection from Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma, who had faith in the industry. Unfortunately, just as Suzlon started pulling out of the difficult times and restructuring, Tulsi Tanti passed away unexpectedly at the young age of 64, in October 2022.
After he passed away, the Board elevated his elder brother, Vinod, as Chairman and Managing Director, and his younger brother, Girish, as Executive Vice Chairman. His son Pranav was also appointed to the board. Their first task was to stabilise the company. Then under this team, Suzlon 2.0 was formulated.
The plan envisages moving from a pure-play wind OEM to a wind-first, full-stack renewable energy solutions company, built to serve a new energy-intensive world. Over the next 5 years, the company plans to expand renewable energy sales fourfold to 10 GW, to grow the order book to 15 GW and to scale assets under management (AUM) fourfold to 70 GW, creating an annuity-led business.
In India, we have been fairly successful in adding new wind and solar generating capacity. But we haven’t been able to plan and install the necessary transmission lines to evacuate the power to the consuming centres. And we have made almost no headway in the storage of renewable energy, to be used as needed. With both solar and wind energy being produced intermittently, much of our generation capacity is forced to back down and shut off, knocking off all financial projections and plant economics for a six! Suzlon seeks to make a dent with an added business of battery energy storage systems (BESS).
India, and the rest of the world cannot ignore the enormous steps being taken by China. It added almost 120 GW of wind power in 2025. And today in 2025 has approximately half the capacity of the global installed capacity of 1300 GW.
As in many other areas of economic activity our government and business have to start setting much more ambitious targets than we have got used to.