In Smart Meter Business, ADANI's win is Airtel's win!
It’s an odd case when Adani’s win = Airtel’s win! 🙏🙏
It’s an odd case when Adani’s win = Airtel’s win! 🙏🙏
You don’t rarely the names of the two groups taken together.
Yet, Adani Group going for a 25% share in the booming smart meter market is great news for Airtel.
And this is how this works.
See, Modi Govt has laid out plans to transition all 27cr or so electricity meters in the country to smart meters. And this has to be completed in 5yrs.
This shall bring down electricity thefts and misuse dramatically, and also bring in major efficiencies & cost-savings for the power distribution companies, most of which are state-owned & heavily loss-making.
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But, how big an opportunity is this?
And take the case of my society. We are being charged Rs 8.5k per household for a new meter.
Thus, if I use that as the standard price, for 25cr meters that goes past Rs 2.1 lakh crore! 🙏🙏
And this is what has attracted a lot of private-sector majors.
Among them is Adani Group’s listed entity, Adani Energy Solutions.
Adani has announced the aim to corner no less than 25% share of this market, meaning, about 6.25cr of the 25cr meters to be replaced
And that seems highly doable, given Adani has already won the contracts for over 2cr smart meters
It’s in the process of installing 18L smart meters in Mumbai (7L already installed)
Other orders are from the rest of Maharashtra (1.15cr), Andhra Pradesh (41L), Bihar (28L), Assam (8L) & Uttarakhand (6L).
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But, where does Airtel benefit from all of this?
Well, smart metering business is not just about installing and maintaining a meter. There are two more things.
Seamless internet connectivity between the smart meter and the power distribution company’s servers and systems
Storage of all the data generated for each meter in this process in secure cloud
Here, for the secure cloud, Adani has rolled in a sister entity (AdaniConnex) which is in the business of building data centres.
But, for the internet connectivity thing, it has partnered with Airtel!
Thus, if Adani goes on to achieve 25% market share by installing 6.25cr smart meters, that will get Airtel just as many fresh new connections. And on each meter, Airtel will be able to mint some money every month! 🙏🙏
Best,
Jayant Mundhra