It has been our aim to build our core competence around service differentiation and build a competitive organization on the strength of cost and productive efficiency to ensure long term sustenance in an environment that places a premium on both service quality and cost accountability.

Unleashing innovation and imagination is the key to business success in the competitive marketplace. A first-time measure has been to introduce social intermediation in villages to promote the concept of energy conservation and commercialisation and facilitate metering of domestic supplies against the promise of reliable and affordable electricity supply. Consumers have responded by demonstrating commercial behaviour, resulting in avoidance of energy thefts and improving the collection of user charges. Currently, 66% of the domestic consumer population in villages is covered under metered supply. A unique intervention has been to organize basic literacy classes for village women to reinforce the role of electricity in improving lives and enhancing gender development. Success of the measures is seen from the comments made by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who visited one such site and stated that “seeing first-hand the tangible quality of life improvements brought by reliable electricity was memorable.”

Innovations in network and demand side engineering have paid rich dividends in curtailing energy losses. A novel concept has been to introducee LT-less distribution or agricultural connections and facilitate energy-efficient pumping so as to conserve both energy and water and avoid environmental degradation. In addition, introduction of LT-insulated wires for supply to households in villages has reduced the propensity of energy thefts while optimising network performance.

Process interventions in the areas of metering and billing have ensured that the loopholes for revenue leakages are effectively plugged. The Company follows a fail-safe system of electronic data transfer of meter readings to the bill processing module, thereby dispensing with manual entries. Daily collections are monitored on-line via the WAN and LAN infrastructure. Currently, the energy losses stand at 8%, the lowest in the country, while the gross collection rate is 99%.

IT is relied upon to handle the growing size of the business, while retaining the focus on improving productivity, cycle times and customer relationships. Major initiatives include integrating network, customer and asset management by leveraging geo-spatial information, undertaking remote network sensing and operation in real time and improving daily work management by automating the business processes of billing, collection and human resource management on SAP platform and financial management on Oracle Apps. Of particular significance is the GIS-based system, which allows users to undertake complex engineering analyses, create network designs, generate Bill-of-Materials and manage Trouble Calls at the Dispatching Centre. All new Sub-stations are presently left unmanned, with the SCADA software providing the vehicle for remote network management in real time and dispensing with the need for additional manpower.

Due consideration is necessary to develop the power infrastructure and meet the demand escalation commensurate with the business growth. New avenues are being explored to procure power from alternative sources and supplement the current intake arrangement so as to meet the increase in load demand in the short and medium terms.