 "Saurabh Kumar, eesl")
The timing of this meeting with Saurabh Kumar, the 50-year-old managing director of a company set up to promote energy efficiency, could not have been more appropriate. Kumar heads Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), a joint venture of power public sector undertakings, and his company is executing the world’s biggest electric vehicle tender by procuring 10,000 e-cars. A second tender to procure another 10,000 is underway.
Kumar suggests we meet at the Bikaner House (New Delhi) outlet of Chor Bizarre, a restaurant known for its Kashmiri food. It’s a short walk from his residence on Shah Jahan Road. “The Chor Bizarre on Asaf Ali Road was one of the first few restaurants I would visit when I joined the tax department in Delhi in 1994. I like specialised food in a small restaurant,” he says as we greet each other.
Without further ado, we order a tarami each, which is a meal comprising rice and Kashmiri dishes including tabak maaz and goshtaba, served on a copper plate.
Kumar, who had started his career as an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer in 1992, is an electrical engineer from IIT, Kanpur. At the moment, he is busy overseeing the distribution of millions of LED bulbs and tying up with municipalities to replace street lights with LED lamps.
His stint at the tax department overseeing the south Delhi region was pretty exciting. Kumar says he was the first tax officer to raise tax demand on a political party, the Indian National Congress. “Under the IT Act, political parties are otherwise exempt from tax. They need to maintain accounts, have record of all donations more than Rs 10,000. They have to get accounts audited and consolidate it. INC had not done that,” said Kumar, who as a young officer, raised a demand of Rs 240 million on the party.
While the Congress was not in power at the time, it was supporting the United Front government from outside. The Congress appealed against the order. The order was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2017, 20 years after he raised the demand.
As assistant commissioner of Income Tax, Kumar conducted a big multi-city raid on the Usha India Group, promoted by the Rai family, which had interests in steel and telecom. “We figured that they had siphoned off big loans from financial institutions. That was a fantastic experience. When you conduct a raid, secrecy is of utmost importance. You can’t even tell your boss about a raid if he is not part of the investigating team,” said Kumar.
On February 14, 2001 (he recalls the exact date), the tax department searched 110 premises of the Group across 30 cities. Kumar’s office was behind the Videocon Towers at Jhandewalan. He says the department had hired over a hundred Tata Sumos to ferry the 70 teams formed to conduct the raids. “Vehicles were lined up on the road leading up to the Videocon Towers which then used to house the office of the India Today Group. The reporters realised something big is happening. They trailed the last Sumo and figured out that it was about the Usha India Group.” Kumar and his team were able to seize assets worth Rs 1.7 billion. As the operating officer of the raid, Kumar was confined to his office three days in a row with little sleep. “There was no choice as it was an ongoing operation. Hundred pages in evidence were put up for the issue of warrants.” The case was later handed over to the CBI.
We are so engrossed in the conversation that we don’t notice that a member of the serving staff is waiting patiently beside our table. He asks Kumar whether he likes the food. Kumar says he is a frequent visitor and urges him to take my view. “This is a very typical Kashmiri goshtaba. Most Kashmiri dishes use lot of milk,” Kumar says while taking a bite.
In 2002, he moved on a deputation to the power ministry as a deputy secretary overseeing finance-related issues. He was involved in the appraisal of various power sector schemes. Kumar says he was lucky that between 2002 and 2005 the sector crossed many milestones. “Starting with the Electricity Act, distribution reforms, rural electrification... it was a great learning experience. The Energy Conservation Act was new, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency was also new.”
He resigned from the IRS before taking charge as EESL chief in 2013. That was also the year when EESL was set up and Kumar was its 13th employee. Kumar says the role has changed completely from the one he played in the tax department. “As a tax collector, you look at every piece of paper you come across during investigation with disbelief. But EESL was an empty script five years back and we had to believe the company.”
One of the first things he had to do was to create a completely new product. Kumar was associated with the Bachat Lamp Yojana (a scheme to replace incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs) during his three-year stint at the BEE. He took a cue from that scheme — which was discontinued as CFLs lost popularity with the arrival of LED bulbs — and spotted an opportunity in LED bulbs. And so a new scheme, Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All (UJALA) was born.
Kumar said he was able to put together a sincere team and has never looked back. “We started completing one project after another. The next one was the streetlight project; then building lights and so on.” EESL has distributed 300 million LED bulbs and replaced over 5.9 million street lamps — all this in just about four years. Kumar has been told that EESL is the biggest single consumer of the lights business for Philips, globally. “They have won each contract through competitive bidding. I don’t think there is any other entity that has procured more LED lights than EESL”. Still, Philips accounts for just a-third of the firm’s total LED procurement.
The prices of LED bulbs have fallen and awareness is up, says Kumar with evident satisfaction. But are the manufacturers making money? “I am pretty sure they are making good margins. The number of players in the market has gone up,” he points out.
EESL has managed to get projects rolling at a fast pace. “Since we don’t take any money from the government we don’t have to go back to the government for an approval. I don’t remember a single project that was rejected for investment approval by our Board,” he says. Last August, the government mandated that all government buildings should turn energy efficient and as a result EESL had an opportunity to retrofit its products across 3,000 buildings.
The next and emerging business opportunity at EESL is the procurement and leasing of e-cars to the various government departments. Last October, it finalised a tender to procure 10,000 vehicles from Tata Motors and M&M. Like in the case of LED bulbs, EESL managed to get a rate from Tata Motors that was 20 per cent lower than M&M’s and the latter was forced to match prices. EESL is also present in smart meters, solar study lamps and so on.
Kumar’s wife, Anupama Anand, is also from the IRS. The two had met while undergoing training at the National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur. Their two daughters are following completely different career paths. His elder daughter is working in the US with a data analytics start-up and the younger one is studying in Boston. “I am so glad they are not interested in the bureaucracy,” says Kumar as I polish off the last bit of the scrumptious phirni.
