Adani Energy Solutions is planning to scale up its C&I (commercial & industrial) segment 10 times from its current size over the next five years as it looks to expand into the adjacencies of its current business lines.
Its current business lines include transmission, distribution, smart metering and centralised cooling services.
“We are targeting to serve an aggregate load demand of 7,000 MW in five years, from 717MW we are doing currently,” Kandarp Patel, CEO, AESL said at the company’s investor call.
C&I business
The C&I business is AESL’s newest business and its revenue and profitability contribution is small, which the company is looking to change. AESL currently serves over a dozen companies across sectors like cement, auto and auto parts, ports, and chemicals.
The C&I segment accounts for about 40-45% share in all-India energy demand, according to rating firm Icra.
Adani Energy’s peer Tata Power is in talks with various commercial and industrial (C&I) customers to provide customised green energy solutions, the company said earlier.
Current regulations allow users with 1MW load and above – the C&I segment – the freedom to choose their service provider, which typically is their existing discom. Adani Energy Solutions wants to attract these bulk users by offering them customized solutions.
“Our strategy is not to enter into back-to-back contract with the generators after we sign on a customer. In this, not only are the margins low, there is very little value-add we can bring to the table. Our model is to aggregate the demand and then offer customized solutions, as per the customer’s requirement, be it in the form of green power or supply reliability,” said Patel.
Tie up with BSS players
Patel said the company is tying up with BSS (battery storage service) players, to offer RTC (round-the-clock) green power as part of its offering. To improve their ESG scores and meet sustainability goals, many companies have committed target of having green sources in their power mix and this segment AESL is looking to tap with customized solutions. The company is currently focusing on the industrial states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan, before expanding to other parts of the country.
Patel said the company is aiming to install 7 million smart meters in FY26, having significantly ramped up per day installation rate to 25,000-27,000. During the June quarter, the company installed 2.4 million meters, versus 3.13 million in the whole of FY25, taking its total installed-base to 5.54 million meters. Patel said the company is confident of maintaining it’s 22% market share in the smart meter space post balance 12 crore meters come up for bidding.
In centralised cooling service, Patel said that the company is implementing projects worth 52,000 tonne of refrigeration (TR) capacity, including the country’s largest such facility of 45,000 TR. It is eyeing projects worth quarter million TR.
In transmission, Patel said the new bidding pipeline remains very strong at almost `90,000 crore of projects to come up for bidding over the next one year. “We will be prudent in our approach. The competitive intensity is not very intense as the pipeline is big and most developers have projects in hand,” he said.
Having commissioned three projects during the quarter, AESL plans to commission four more projects this year, including the `7,000 crore Mumbai HVDC project. It has guided for FY26 capex at Rs 16,000 -18,000 crore, with Rs 12000-13,000 crore for transmission, `4,000 crore for smart meters, and about Rs 1,600 crore in distribution.
AESL last Thursday posted a net profit of Rs 512 crore in Q1FY26 as against a loss of Rs 824 crore in Q1FY25. The company’s revenues went up 26.8% to Rs 6819 crore in Q1FY26 as compared to Rs 5379 crore. Its Ebitda went up 3.1 % to `2315 crore in Q1FY26.