This podcast is a recorded version of Avaana Climate Corner's fireside chat with Mahua Acharya on the Evolution of Carbon Markets and Electric Mobility. The podcast will cover the growth of carbon markets, both in India and worldwide, and the nature of carbon credits that are being sought out today. It will additionally explore the electric mobility space, particularly with regards to the work done by Mahua, with the Government of India, and the shift towards electric buses amongst other types of EVs. The episode ends with a QnA on the size and nature of global carbon markets, the growth of voluntary carbon markets, and future scope in these spaces. The transcript of the episode can be accessed here:- https://avaana.simplecast.com/episodes/evolution-of-carbon-markets-and-electric-mobility
[00:00:00] Mahua Acharya: Life is a little bit different. Of course, theory matters. And that's the reason people still think about it when they design schemes, but it is a way for countries like ourselves to seek additional revenue for the kinds of technologies that we want. And the kinds of technologies that countries like ourselves need as we transition over to cleaner pathways.
[00:00:28] Mahua Acharya: Climate change hits all of us. It's nowhere near undebated. In fact, it's the opposite. In India, it's how badly does it hit us where? So , if I'm in the business of wanting to promote better technologies, here's an incentive that's out there.
[00:00:44] Swapna Gupta: Absolutely. And how have you seen that evolve from say 20 years to today where I feel it has become more flavor of the season versus what it was in the past, of course, in a way that everyone understands it I guess better, but understands it, still not well understood in the terms of conversations around it. Lot of platforms out there, you don't know the legitimacy of the platforms, there's a lot of criticism around greenwashing and attribution issues among developers, investors, double counting, et cetera. So while it's understood, it's still not well understood in some sense. How have you seen that evolution from past to today and how do you think that will evolve, and continue to evolve, and where will it end?
[00:01:27] Swapna Gupta: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Mahua Acharya: I must say that discussions in India are very different from the discussions in Europe, and very different from the discussions that I have seen going on in several parts of the African continent. So that's number one, and that's natural. We have different realities to deal with at different times. I would certainly not say it's fashionable. I really don't want to put it in that category because for us in India, we need all sorts of instruments. We need this policy instrument. We need this economic instrument. So I'd like for it to have the level of seriousness that it deserves after 20 years of maturity and 15 years of trading and 15 years of economic activity around it.
[00:02:12] Mahua Acharya: In the European Union carbon trading today is absolutely normal. When I started this business, when we all started out, it was an experiment. We were all very excited. We used to get excited going to a conference and if 150 people showed up, we'd be thrilled. Wow, there's 150 people working on carbon markets. At one time we got 300 and we just, we were delirious. But those were the days where it was a brand new thing, it was an experiment, it was pilot. The EU started off with it and now fast forward so many years and it's completely normal activity in EU. What has happened? You made some comments about greenwashing.
[00:02:57] Mahua Acharya: I have certain concerns about greenwashing as I think anybody should. Today in a positive way, we are in a situation today where companies are setting for themselves net zero targets. And the downside is that the allegations of greenwashing are amongst the very few companies that have set net zero targets or targets of any kind. The allegations of greenwashing or in fact, not doing anything, are not on those that have set no targets. So I think the time is not just come, but there's enough experience and confidence in the market now amongst many of us who've been in this business for a while, that you have to call a spade and you have to call it out when you need to call it out.
[00:03:51] Mahua Acharya: But let's also be mindful that if you are going to call out a company who has set a target and perhaps it's not enough, chances are those that have not set targets will be very shy to come forward. Why do I need the spotlight? Why should I get the spotlight? Why should I be attacked? So that second portion bothers me a little bit.
[00:04:15] Mahua Acharya: So what bothers me about greenwashing is not so much what those few companies are doing. Of course, nobody wants greenwashing, but it slows down those that were at the margins.
[00:04:28] Swapna Gupta: And like you said, the burden of entirety is on few and then you become the spotlight. That is true, but you also mentioned it makes you confident that the time has come now because a lot of people are adopting and there is strong push. In terms of CQuest journey also in this space, right, what part of the puzzle are you solving for? And is there something to learn from that experience also both for enterprises as well as entrepreneurs who are building in this space?
[00:05:01] Mahua Acharya: I was involved with CQuest at the time that it was set up about 10-12 years ago. I have rejoined, of course, in a different capacity where I now co manage the whole thing, as opposed to what I used to do so many years ago. CQuest is an investor in projects that generate carbon assets. It is a developer, because you own the carbon asset and you develop it. And then it's also the implementer, so it's very heavy on operations. So it's an investment house plus an operating company. And therefore has many people very familiar with operations. The purpose is to use carbon finance as an instrument for two things. In several countries, it is to deliver basic development outcomes. We're in so many African countries down in the villages in the most remote areas, putting forward basic cooking solutions, basic lighting solutions, basic fuel to fuel the cooking solution that we have given them. This is the job of maybe multilaterals together with the government.
[00:06:13] Mahua Acharya: Generally private money is not likely to reach these households. So we've done millions, over 5 million. Here is an instrument that allows us to do this. And allows people like ourselves to make money because how else can I expand it? So that's one. The other portion is, can I use carbon finance as a revenue stream to expedite the energy transition?
[00:06:36] Mahua Acharya: So in countries like India, we are transitioning quite rapidly, in as organized a manner as we can, but we also all know that we have to move much faster. But it's not so easy. We're not a small entity. We're also very complicated in our setup, but somewhere in there can we use carbon finance to cover the gaps between battery storage, renewable fed battery storage, and what's on the grid so I can push solar into the evening hours and I never need subsidy for that So in a method like that, it seems so normally intuitive. That's the kind of stuff that we're doing at CQuest. We're not a trader. We develop this carbon finance stream because the assets are what gives, what pitches that value.
[00:07:27] Swapna Gupta: And what you said is essentially very critical, where you said what charge, which should have ideally been led by government, DFI, multilateral, you're trying to bridge that gap and agility is stable states, right? So I think that brings me to the entrepreneurs, as we speak to more and more entrepreneurs, I think every week, at least two or three new entrepreneurs who want to build in carbon markets are trying to touch different parts within carbon markets. Of course, they will be agile. And of course, they are also trying to take the private market approach to build what essentially would need humongous amount of capital from public markets or government. What we do as part of these conversations is seed various ideas because we are not building for today, but we are building for tomorrow. So a lot of these entrepreneurs will start on their journey today and over 10 years, it will really fructify into making something meaningful. So any gaps that you see, which you throw out there as a challenge, as an opportunity to our entrepreneurs to think about and what are the innovations you're seeing in those gaps? And again, the reason I ask is you don't only have India lens, but you have a very global lens into these markets, so something for us to learn from.
[00:08:34] Mahua Acharya: For sure. What I would certainly say for India, because, and you're right, I am applying whatever I know over the last few years, there is a tendency in India to develop something against the current market. Now, if you want to base your business, or the excitement around the business and the upside of the business on today's carbon market, chances are, if I were an investor and evaluating, and I didn't know that market, I would value that company very precariously because the market is in a certain volatile state right now. But it's a given that there will be a carbon market all over the world. There already are so many out there. It's also given that naturally when you have this increasing higgledy-piggledy sesh of markets, they will converge at some point. There will be some level of sanity that will arise, and that will be linkages that people will know. So look at it like many layers of flyovers and roadway networks, then we will get there. But I would certainly tell Indian businesses, think long. If you come in today with, "I have something to sell on carbon market", that's not very sustainable. Think with a purpose. What is the original purpose of the business?
[00:09:54] Mahua Acharya: The day you start treating carbon as an upside, which is what a lot of Indian companies did in the early days, it was largely very attractive pocket money, if I can call it that, because it came at the end of the investment. You didn't know if it actually came. But today, if you get into a structure, you can use that financial instrument in the closing of your project, in the closing of your financial gaps. At that point, you're wedded to the business. So then carbon doesn't stick out like something else that doesn't belong primarily to that business. So integrate it completely. And the day you integrate it, monitoring becomes seamless. Reporting, yes, has it's like different schemes of different reporting. Verification becomes seamless because you're looking for the same thing.
[00:10:40] Swapna Gupta: Got it. And any particular sectors which will take off faster than the other, any particular white spaces where probably you will have a five year horizon versus 10 year horizon where there should be more focus at this time?
[00:10:55] Mahua Acharya: Which one will take off faster? Now, again, I'll focus my comments only again on India because what happens outside doesn't necessarily have a link on India. And when it does, it happens later. There is an increasing need amongst buyers in the carbon market that they want permanent credits. They don't ever want to be pulled up or they don't ever want to feel like they bought these credits, but the reduction that was achieved, that project is no longer there.
[00:11:26] Mahua Acharya: They don't want that. I buy some credits from trees and tomorrow they're deforested. Of course I'm oversimplifying, but that's the idea. So what gets us permanent? It is things that bring nature back, bring trees back and bring your grasslands back. Those things have a long gestation time, but have a very high payout.
[00:11:49] Mahua Acharya: So very high risk, but also very high reward. High risk because you have to, you need a bit of working capital to sustain the gestation period. That is going to develop. It is already developing very quickly all over India. All over the world and also in India as a result, because people are buying from India. The one huge advantage that India has is that we offer a stable economic environment. We offer a stable political environment as well. Our investments are sturdy. They can be stitched up and we give people scale. So , you can put serious money behind these things. So I'm looking forward to that coming up and I'm really hoping that people like yourselves and others start to look at that asset class as a functioning asset class by itself. So that's one. In the voluntary market, there will always be activity, but increasingly things that abate methane, because it's a problem, carbon credits coming out of, there's a list, in fact, produced by the government of India for aspirational types of activities, so hydrogen and fuel cells and battery storage. Those things are where we need the money. Those are right now in a sovereign to sovereign kind of setup, and we don't have any experience there.
[00:13:19] Mahua Acharya: But, these are the areas that are out there. Others will remain. The one thing that will perhaps not fetch a good price going forward is credits from grid connected renewable power. I think they've seen their light, they've seen their days in the sun.
[00:13:36] Swapna Gupta: Okay. No, pun intended. Switching gears to the other hat that you wear, which is very relevant to today's conversation also, electric mobility. One last question, a lot of changes and a lot of innovation typically has been a function of enterprise, consumer, startups coming together, but a lot of work which happens around the policy as well. From your vantage point, do you see any key changes happening which will also enable the startup ecosystem in the country towards carbon markets or it's assumed the uncertainty there is at times?
[00:14:12] Mahua Acharya: I'm very hopeful Swapna. I didn't answer one other part of your question. I'm very hopeful, of course, that more entrepreneurs come up. So it's not just the asset class that people invest in. If you monitor something, you need a digital solution for it. If you verify something, this whole carbon market, at some point, really, I feel quite strongly about this, has to become digital. And for that, you also need technology. So we need some many more entrepreneurs coming up with these technology based solutions for assessment, monitoring, verification, things that you would do anyway. I anyway have digitized when I submit my bill for a renewable power plant to the discom. The meter is not, it's not a hand meter, that's a digital thing out there and I've now linked it up to clouds and so on. We have to overlay that sort of technology and make it seamless with the carbon market. So there's a lot of, I'm hoping to see many more entrepreneurs in that business, blockchain, big developments. In the business of blockchain, big developments in assessing integrity.
[00:15:13] Mahua Acharya: So there's a lot of work there. The other piece of work perhaps is less on the entrepreneurial side and more on the policy side for us is how do you treat this instrument? Is it a commodity? Is it a financial commodity? Can I swap? Are these derivatives? So we have some work to do there in how we treat this.
[00:15:32] Swapna Gupta: Got it.
[00:15:32] Mahua Acharya: How do we tax?
[00:15:34] Swapna Gupta: Yeah. Yeah. No. I think there will be some innovation that will happen there. And thanks for evaluating our thesis, that lot more entrepreneurs will innovate on technology and lead the charge. And build for a country like India, especially because just our size, I think, one or two people really can't solve, but you need a massive entrepreneurial energy to build and require change.
[00:15:55] Swapna Gupta: So thank you for that. Let's switch gears, talk about electric mobility. And as we get to that journey of yours from Yale, moving to India, being part of setting up executive program at IIMA, and then going the electric buses route, of course taking huge pay cuts in the process, I'm sure. How has your journey been?
[00:16:15] Swapna Gupta: And what makes you most excited about the future of EV in the country?
[00:16:19] Mahua Acharya: Somewhere along my career I started feeling like I need to do something bigger than myself. I wasn't sure what that meant, and I didn't have any means to articulate for myself. So around the way I decided that perhaps I should achieve a level of impact. So when asked these, what impact means, it was somewhere at that point, about four, five years ago, maybe four years ago or so, that I got into a conversation with somebody in Delhi who asked, why would you not want to try out government because government appears to, it will give you the scale that you are perhaps looking for. And I was never obvious about the scale thing, but perhaps it showed that I need to do something bigger, more impactful.
[00:17:07] Mahua Acharya: So that's the point at which, and I owe this person a lot of gratitude for just sparking that certain risk being in me. So it had become clear that, yeah, I was getting, I had become quite senior. That's all great. You can change the course of an organization. And I was very grateful to have reached that. So I decided to take a bit of a plunge and it took me three months, a very intense decision making. People I spoke to at those three months, don't want to talk, didn't want to talk to me for a year because I'd bothered them so much.
[00:17:42] Mahua Acharya: It was new. I've never worked in the government. I've always been interfacing with the government for my intergovernmental roles so I was not totally unfamiliar with things like procurement and processes and so on, but it's very different to be inside. But I decided, fine, I'm going to go for it because today, in my career, I want transformative impact. I, again, as I got in, I said, I don't really know what it means, but I'll figure it out because I have the platform and the government is, in fact, it's great to give you that platform.
[00:18:12] Mahua Acharya: I would still say I had, of course, a great time. When you asked me, do you ever sleep? I think in the government, during those days people would ask me if I was not well. So that was the motivation saying, let me give it a shot. It's a crazy, quote unquote, career plunge, because it's not what people like us do, we don't come from the government, so we're not used to that system. It's also very different, and you're nervous, you're scared. But anyway, so that's the plunge I took, and I said, I'm just going to go for it because I want to see, I wanna prove two things . I wanted to, of course, prove to myself that I could do something bigger, but I also wanted to prove to myself that we're able, in India, despite all of our criticisms of the system, to achieve change. It's entirely possible to achieve it, even with the speed that we've managed to do it with the electric mobility stuff.
[00:19:10] Mahua Acharya: It is absolutely possible. So when people complain and they become all negative, today I just feel like, no, there is a lot of space to make change in India. And there is space to put out new ideas. There is space to, put out some entrepreneurism and every system there are drawbacks. No system is perfect.
[00:19:34] Swapna Gupta: I was just resonating. That could not resonate more ... If you want to you can really make things move and that's possible with current infrastructure that the country provides, but also folks like you coming from different walks of life, really walking into that and taking a plunge, like you said, to create that change.
[00:19:51] Swapna Gupta: We'd love to see more and more of that talent come in and do that, bring that change. Again, assuming you had a great journey and just some achievements and lessons from there, because electric bus, we will start talking about it as we started this conversation, right, it seems to be that big mammoth can't be moved and over time it became reality. So talk to us about some of those achievements and lessons, which also brings us back to how electric mobility will transform India.
[00:20:17] Mahua Acharya: So as I got in there was another person that asked me, and I won't put out names here, but I owe him additional gratitude. He said, what exactly are you going to focus on? And what level of change do you feel you want to make? And I didn't have an answer. This was perhaps in the first two weeks of something of getting in.
[00:20:37] Mahua Acharya: And I was quite inundated, just playing catch up and learning and going and meeting people and being introduced to them. But I didn't have an answer and that question haunted me for some time. So I had two issues in front of me. We could work on electric mobility because the country was making the right sort of noises.
[00:20:58] Mahua Acharya: There were a few cars on the road. There were some promising new ones coming along. And there was some real conversations amongst people who had invested a lot of time, effort and money into the technology. So the technology part gave me a fair bit of confidence and relief that we're not just going to be riding a storm.
[00:21:19] Mahua Acharya: So if I were to bite this, maybe because there's investment in technology and there's thinking out there. Perhaps we could build on it, because then you're not building on a fad. And all of this might sound very frivolous to people in the sector who've been at it, who've been in the business of electric for seven, eight years, because they've been talking about it. I was brand new. I don't know anything about electric, nothing. I knew nothing about cars, let alone buses or even STU. So that's a whole different animal. So I decided to take to focus. And more than electric mobility, I think part of me said if you've got to scale, rule number one is you have to focus.
[00:21:59] Mahua Acharya: It seems contrary, but focus is the, I think, is the recipe for scale. The day you start moving around here and there, your ability to become bigger, more impactful, comes down. So I decided I was going to focus on electric mobility. And so we had built up this new SPV that was given to me to build out.
[00:22:23] Mahua Acharya: Along the way, you're scratching around looking for models because we didn't have models and we're designing them as we go along. Let's design a model, business model, for two wheelers. Let's design something for three wheelers. How do I get more cars on the road? My parent company was already in the car leasing business so I had something to start with, but how do I do more of that? And then what do we do about buses? So, that's what started the journey around. There was a bit of trial and error. There's a business model that works. That business model comes out of some research. We zoomed in on buses. Largely because one, I felt two wheelers, the market's taken off by itself, so you ask yourself, what is the need of a government entity over here? I didn't have an answer to myself. So let the market take it up because of course, that's what I think the market should do. They should take it up. But three wheelers, I think we can say that it was very difficult.
[00:23:23] Mahua Acharya: I really cannot say that a big job was done for that. Yes, we've put out some three wheelers on Delhi roads, on some in Bangalore roads, but hardly anything. So we didn't, we couldn't manage for different reasons. For cars it was always there. Let's try and just change the fleet for the Government of India and for the government of other states. So let's just find a business model and just change that. But buses, I decided along the way, that , if I'm gonna be in government, then I have access to this, public sector, state sector institution that A otherwise nobody's really going to touch and from outside private sector cannot even do it.
[00:24:10] Mahua Acharya: So let me just work on that one because that affects people. So in, again in a government hat, which one do I focus on that has the highest social impact . It is a huge people carrier, huge. And it needs to be a much bigger people carrier that we have. So that was the reason we ended up focusing on buses.
[00:24:32] Mahua Acharya: And of course, a lot of things helped. We were mandated by the government, so that helped give you the legitimacy. It was then upon us to figure out how, what do you do with that legitimacy and to create a business model. And then we had to go around recruiting people, recruiting states into a common tender.
[00:24:50] Mahua Acharya: We had to go and talk to recruit them into your plan. So I met, I think, I must've met so many states. And so many secretaries of transport in these states and it was great. All I can say that, it was anything between, it was all positive, but it was anything between, let's give her something, let's see if this is a bit of an experiment, if it works. Whereas others who are much more involved in the process were a little bit more converted to working with your methods. It just so happened that when we ended up opening the first tender, a lot of work had gone in the development of that document. The document was developed by consensus.
[00:25:37] Mahua Acharya: I did not want to draft something and just put it out there. I wanted people to believe in it. I wanted them to tell me if they can't do something, I will have to change it. It's not a great document, but I'd have to change it because you have to understand the realities of things. So it was a document made out of consensus. We ended up getting, as prices that were significantly cheaper than diesel. So that's when I think another set of people woke up. Wow, you can make electric cheaper than diesel. It's counterintuitive, but it goes to show that, if you design a business model properly, it is entirely possible to get it done. Not to say that it's anywhere near done. But at least people are now not saying it's actually the opposite. When I was leaving the government, the demand for buses was much more than what we could supply. And the demand for buses was much more than what financiers were able to absorb the risk for.
[00:26:45] Mahua Acharya: So suddenly you had states wanting to change their portfolios. So I took a great level of comfort relief and satisfaction that at least a certain level of the business model has been made now normal. States came into a unified tender. Transport is a state matter, they have no reason to come into a unified tender. It's their business. It goes to show if you work with people, you can get to agreement eventually. Eventually.
[00:27:19] Swapna Gupta: Oh, I think I took a lot of words there. Focus, impact, scale, create consensus. A lot which our entrepreneurs can learn from as they build their businesses. So buses, great success story or, like you said, success story in the making. Was there any existing playbooks you could use at that time? Are there other playbooks which other people can think about using from, learning from?
[00:27:44] Mahua Acharya: Yeah, that was an important consideration for me in a certain level of responsibility you keep as a government public officer. You can't do scale and speed and completely new all at the same time; completely new business model, completely new anything all at the same time.
[00:28:03] Mahua Acharya: I think that's a very risky proposition. So I was lucky that this particular business model had been tested in a few cities. Delhi had some experience, Bombay had some experience, Bangalore had some experience. It was few, but there were some people I could talk to. So I took a great level of comfort working with those early leaders. Bringing them in saying, you're the people that have done this and you're the people that did this well before me. You did it in your city, I'm doing it across other states. The business model, how it works, it doesn't work. They were very generous with their time.
[00:28:39] Mahua Acharya: The other thing I learned along the process is I went to see as many as I could, countries that have done, that have delivered, or I was looking for business models for public transport, electric or otherwise. So we looked at a few Latin American cities, we looked at London, I looked at Dusseldorf, a number of places. China was a little hard because everything was in Chinese, so it's a little difficult, but studied as much as possible, reached out to as many people as possible. And somewhere along the way, through a little group that we had set up, a little working group with some states and others, we put out a 'appropriateness of these solutions'. So yes, I had something to start with, but the one biggest, the piece that we did not have , anybody had, is how do I put state based orders into a central tender? Because they have no control on the tendering. They don't get the operator, they have no view on the operator that comes out.
[00:29:46] Swapna Gupta: Yeah, so operational challenges along the way, navigate them and get there. Any other white spaces in your mind that exist in EV? I loved how you put it, two wheeler, three wheeler, the scale didn't seem relevant. Four wheeler, cars, it was different and for buses, it just seemed that it could be an all India sort of impact and scale it could bring.
[00:30:05] Swapna Gupta: What are the other white spaces, given you have been in this space, you're seeing what's happening? We, at Avaana, we have invested in couple of companies in EV. We have done an EV financing play. We have done an EV operating system software called Kazam, we have done Alpha Vector which is electric bikes. We continue to look across and we see many entrepreneurs building across spaces but what are the other key white spaces that you see which could become the next goldmine if you will.
[00:30:32] Mahua Acharya: So with three wheelers now, I think it's not as if the scale was not big enough. It's that I couldn't find a... there were two things that let us down in a way. At the affordability level of people that could buy these vehicles, now I'm talking about the quote unquote auto driver, what's called public passenger auto, at the range bracket that they can afford these things, they want a longer mileage. Now for longer mileage, you need a bigger battery or a better performing battery or a different battery. Bigger battery means higher costs. So I escaped the cost. I escaped that range. So that takes me to who is going to finance these people. There are no funds. There were no, unless things have changed
[00:31:18] Swapna Gupta: Yeah, I know we invested in a company called Turno to enable that transition.
[00:31:22] Mahua Acharya: That's it. They have the owners of these vehicles and whichever way you cut it. People would tell me there's an increasing B2B business. Actually, even in the fleet and that other segment, they are still an individual that owns a vehicle. That individual that has to go out and secure that vehicle and then gets paid for rides.
[00:31:44] Mahua Acharya: So somebody should take the risk of that individual who owns a vehicle for whom it is employment. Basic, fundamental, and primary, and perhaps even only employment. So that was a big hole that the product itself was perhaps not catering to what people needed. We could have put swapping stations every 10 kilometers and that would have fixed the problem. To put up swapping stations is a very complicated business because you get into the business of land and all of that. So there was a timing mismatch. So that's the three wheeler thing. Where are the white spaces?
[00:32:20] Mahua Acharya: Huge. There are plenty, so much opportunity. Financing is a big one. Big one for three wheelers and for buses.
[00:32:29] Swapna Gupta: It's a great point, validates our thesis of investing in Turno. But what more areas are there?
[00:32:36] Mahua Acharya: Financing is a big one. Digitization is a very big one. We need plenty more digital and digitized solutions out there. We just don't have enough. There's just so many things. You can develop carbon credits from this and those carbon credits are very valuable. They don't have to be an extra revenue stream because we just made it cheaper than diesel, but you need it for risk mitigation, payment guarantees, and so on.
[00:33:03] Mahua Acharya: So payment guarantee is a big one. There are so many things. There's so much work to be done in batteries. Different types of batteries, different chemistries, so much of work to be done with swapping. I want my landscape around me to have swapping stations. I used to say, like, when I step out of my house, I know I'll find an ATM somewhere.
[00:33:26] Mahua Acharya: I'm not actually so worried when I don't have cash because somewhere around, in a quick enough radius, I'll find an ATM. To put up a swapping station is not that much more clunky than an ATM.
[00:33:40] Mahua Acharya: Network effect. We've got to find other business model, retailify it, all those things.
[00:33:46] Swapna Gupta: Absolutely. And I know our audience already has started typing in questions. I want to leave another 10 minutes. I'll ask you two last questions on mobility and then open up. One is since you touched on swapping, are you in one of the other camps swapping versus fast charging?
[00:34:01] Swapna Gupta: Do you believe in both the camps? How do you think India will evolve?
[00:34:05] Mahua Acharya: India is very big. If you pick on one horse, you always wanted the other one. It is just so big because we have such huge headroom. We have so much of work to do. We've got to have both, where you can put up, you can slice and dice the problem and people have talked about it for hours and put up public charging stations for cars and buses and other things.
[00:34:29] Mahua Acharya: Yes. And opportunistically, if you've put up, if you've got the space for a public charging station, of course, you'll put a lower charger for a smaller vehicle, but that doesn't mean it's an either or. They will both survive and they'll both do very well, there's enough demand.
[00:34:46] Swapna Gupta: Yeah, you're serving a country of 1. 4 billion people, so fair point, there's enough and more. I think last question from my end and then I'll open. Since you mentioned public charging, there has been this recent announcement for unified energy interface and there has been this conversations. Any thoughts, any views, any innovation that you see around that?
[00:35:07] Mahua Acharya: So I think software, it's a good development. I see it as a positive development towards market building. A lot of our charging station work initially revolved around which protocol, what do we do? What about this? What about that? So in the first stage of the electric mobility work where I was not in the government, but I inherited some things that are already done.
[00:35:29] Mahua Acharya: And they were done with the most inclusive mind: let's try and get all of these churning protocols, whichever takes off. But after that, they became, in some ways, unfortunate hassles, if I can call it that. Barrier would be too strong a word, because again, the market is so big, you can still put up your very proprietary technology and there'll still be people for it, but it's an unnecessary hassle. If you want to scale something, the second ingredient is to make it simple. So as simple as possible, therefore a unified payments, huge one, unified energy interface .
[00:36:03] Swapna Gupta: I'm also looking forward to the development and how that evolves. I think people want you back on carbon markets. So we have a lot of questions around carbon markets. So we'll get there. So a couple of questions and I'm going to read it out to them. One of the question is how big is the carbon trading market globally? Who are the key players and startup and companies in India on this forefront? Do you have any thoughts, please, Mahua?
[00:36:27] Mahua Acharya: The global carbon market is over 300 billion US dollars. So it's not small. And the voluntary portion of that is growing in leaps and bounds. So it's a very small number compared to the 300 plus billion USD. But because it's growing in leaps and bounds, it's going to be there. What does the Indian market look like? I really have no idea in terms of numbers. It's been some time that I even engaged in the Indian market right now. I happened to be based in India and I look forward to building it out here, but there are a number of companies who have been active in the first era, if I can call it that. They were a lot of consulting companies, largely developing the documentation.
[00:37:09] Mahua Acharya: I'm hoping to see many more with investments in the business. Let the consulting companies do what they're doing. They do a really good job and they're a necessary part of the ecosystem. Absolutely. But we also need more players to come in, right? We need more players to hinge their businesses on common finance.
[00:37:29] Mahua Acharya: That's how you make it a serious instrument. So that will come and I'm optimistic that will happen because we had this new regulation announcement recently. And yes, there's a lot of work to be done, but it didn't just come out. It took 18 months of preparation to get there.
[00:37:51] Mahua Acharya: It signals a certain direction of travel, where this country is going. So it's only going to go in a certain way from here. It will, it has legitimized the discussion today. I can have a discussion on taxing carbon revenues with a lot of auditors. I couldn't do that earlier.
[00:38:11] Swapna Gupta: Yeah, I think directional sense definitely helps. Will this also allow large India based conglomerates to be allowed in voluntary carbon markets without any government regulations?
[00:38:21] Mahua Acharya: I think large Indian conglomerates are anyway playing in the voluntary carbon market without any government regulation. They're already there. For the Indian market, we have to make sure that we take seriously and enforce with seriousness our targets. Our efficiency targets and targets for CO2 control and greenhouse gas control and other gases. The day we enforce that seriously, the people will take it seriously, companies will put it into their investment planning decisions, and then they will buy carbon for it or again, depending on how much they need. Many of our big corporates, industrial houses, have been thinking about deep abatement, what they call deep decarbonization. How will I ever decarbonize the steel industry or cement? Because there are technological limitations after a point and then you'd really have to innovate big time or invest huge amounts in alternatives like hydrogen fueling and so on. So some work to be done there, because I know that they're feeling the pressure. We're in a connected world, their parent companies have targets, their own companies who are situated somewhere else have greenhouse gas reduction targets, their purchasers have targets. We're getting pressure from a lot of places, so they're already playing in it. We just have to make sure that our targets are enforced.
[00:40:00] Swapna Gupta: Absolutely. Last question, and I will wrap up this ... You've chosen to stay back, I suppose you are in Delhi. What are the other areas you're excited about? What else are you looking forward to, other than of course the role that you're leading at today?
[00:40:16] Mahua Acharya: First one is I want more, I would love to see, and I'm going to try to work on it -people like yourselves engage in these investments, in the making of these instruments, in the making of these funds and businesses. We need many more leaders like yourselves. You all have come forth. You're ahead of the curve. But we need many more, and it's better for both, for all of us, if there are more, because you also get a bit of cover, right? You don't only just want to be sticking out. I'm also hopeful that we can spur a community of innovation. Again, people like yourself, people like others who are like minded, can we bring them together and start to develop stuff that has scale again, back to big programmatic portfolios.
[00:41:07] Mahua Acharya: Big assets. We want to further, we want to invest in battery storage. I really think we should make that as a service just like we did with electric. We made mobility into a service. You've got to convert these things into service models. So that sort of innovation, I want for us to build a community around because we're all private companies now. There's so much the government will do and there's so much else that the rest of us will have to do. I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to seeing how visibly we can expedite the energy transition. A lot of work needs to be done that does not necessarily have to be carbon.
[00:41:46] Mahua Acharya: I have a day job, but I also have a mind. There's a lot of policy innovation we need to do. And I hope that somebody picks it up. Sometimes you have to pull people in and say, look, this is the kind of work that needs to be done. Let's try and see if somebody can get you funded to do it. Because it needs to be done. It's not something that single private companies do, because it's not mandate. So I'm looking forward to building out on the energy transition. I'm looking forward to seeing... I hope that all this electric mobility work absolutely takes off.
[00:42:18] Swapna Gupta: Yeah.
[00:42:18] Mahua Acharya: I can see some signs in Delhi already, fingers crossed. And yes, there's a lot to do over here. It's a very exciting space and it's an exciting time to be in India.
[00:42:28] Swapna Gupta: Thanks Mahua for your time today. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and our audience too did and we look forward to collaborating with you on more such opportunities in future.
[00:42:40] Mahua Acharya: Thank you once again for having me and good luck. I hope you do more of these. Thanks.