Hi, good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Analysts Meet of Indian Energy Exchange. Most of you already know me, but for others, I'm Aparna Garg.

I'm heading Corporate Communications and Investor Relations at IEX. We will soon be starting the event with opening remarks from our Chairman and MD, Mr.

Satyanarayan Goel, followed by detailed presentations by the management team represented by Rohit Bajaj, JMD, Vineet Harlalka, Company Secretary and CFO, and Amit Kumar, Executive Director. The presentation as well as the audio recording will be available on our website as well as the stock exchanges.

I now request Mr. Goel to please come and make the opening remarks.

Thank you.

Good evening, friends. I welcome you all to the IEX Analysts Meet 2026.

Today, I, along with the management team of IEX, will brief you about the our business performance, our strategy, and future outlook, and we will also try to address your queries. Friends, India continues to remain one of the world's fastest-growing major economies, delivering a GDP of 7.7% in FY 2026.

This was supported by domestic consumption, expanding capital investment, and steady industrial and services momentum. RBI has projected GDP growth rate of 6.6% for the FY 2027, a resilient trajectory even as global headwinds persist.

Sustained investment and capex cycles are laying the foundation for a $5 trillion economy before 2030. On the power sector front, India's overall electricity consumption during FY 2026 was 1,708 billion units.

This was largely flat on year-on-year basis because of the good monsoon last year and mild summer. This year, right from the month of April, the summer has been very harsh, and we had less rain.

Peak demand was almost about 271 GW in the month of May, and even in the month of July also, it touched almost about 271 GW, with almost about 12% increase in the peak demand and 8% 8 to 8 8 9% increase in the energy consumption. To meet India's growing demand, last year, capacity addition of 58 GW across thermal and renewable capacity was done, and taking India's capacity total installed capacity to 533 GW, out of which 275 GW is the renewable capacity.

We have achieved more than 50% of installed capacity as a renewable capacity, the target which was to be achieved by 2030 as per the Paris Agreement. We have achieved that in fact 4 years in advance.

CEA projects installed capacity of almost about 950 GW by 2030. Out of that, almost about 66% is going to be the renewable.

Over the past year, major development has been in the energy storage space. As you are aware, the cost of the battery has come down significantly.

In the last 3-4 years, battery cost has come down by almost 70%. Today, the arbitrage available in the market Last year, which was a year where the prices were not very high, in spite of that, we found that a arbitrage of ₹4.5 for almost about 550 cycles of 2 hours was available in the market, which provides a compelling case for battery energy storage systems addition on merchant basis.

We have seen Juniper, Greenko Energy, followed by Acme and Adani Green, they have set up the battery on the merchant basis and selling this selling power in the on the exchange platform. A new class of market participants have come on the exchange platform.

We find that the storage and FDRE contracts are together going to provide a lot of liquidity on the exchange platform in future. On the fuel side, last year, the fuel coal production was more than 1 billion ton, which was a record production.

There was ample supply of coal. Power stations had almost about 25 ton 25 days of inventory, and which was all-time high.

In this year also, for in the first 4 months of this year, there was enough coal available for meeting the demand of the thermal power stations to in this summer months. I'm sure the coal is not going to be a problem in the future also.

Let us now talk about the important regulatory updates and the policy initiatives of the government. Ministry of Power has released draft National Electricity Policy, and what we hear that this policy is going to be taken up for approval by the Cabinet, maybe in the month of August-September.

This policy is chartering India's power sector road map, aligned with Viksit Bharat goals, targeting per capita electricity consumption to almost about 200 2,000 units by 2030 and 4,000 units by 2047. The draft policy prioritizes cost-reflective tariff norms, a phased reduction in cross-subsidies, and TOD pricing to improve efficiency and strengthen discoms' finances.

As per the draft, in order to promote competition, state commissions may allow multiple licenses in the same area. This is something which is being debated extensively these days.

The draft policy emphasizes the role of resource adequacy at the center and and state level to better manage distributed energy resources and ensure grid stability. In fact, many of the states have already started doing the resource adequacy as CEA has come out with a software, and many of the states have started entering into long-term contracts and ensuring resource resources at their disposal.

For deepening of power markets, suitable policy and regulatory framework shall be emphasized shall be established for generation capacity addition through market mechanisms such as bilateral contract for difference, which is difference contract for difference contract, I mean capacity addition through this. Further, the draft proposes electricity from long-term PPA may be encouraged through the exchanges.

This is something, which was discussed in 2018 also, and this policy also talks about that long-term contracts in future should be routed through the exchanges. Central Commission will explore introduction of capacity market in a phased manner to ensure required capacity addition.

Market-based system for consumer participation via demand response individually or through aggregators shall be promoted. Regulatory framework to enable aggregation of distributed renewable generation, small storage systems, and demand response mechanisms to increase market participation needs to be developed.

This is something which is I think is the need of the hour. India Energy Stack, which is now being worked out, I think this will go a long way in providing demand response in the market and developing the local energy market.

I think one of the immediate beneficiary of this will be the P2P market. Appropriate commissions shall facilitate long-term open access for consumers by ensuring stable and predictable open access charges along with unidirectional and progressively reducing trajectory of cross-subsidy and additional surcharge.

In addition to market-based procurement, SCED and SCUC needs to be expanded, and this needs to be implemented at the in at the state level also. Today, it is being done at the central generating stations.

This needs to be extended to the state generating stations also. CERC has already issued a staff paper for capacity market in India, and power exchanges are well-positioned to facilitate transparent and a competitive capacity auctions that will complement the existing energy markets, and this will create additional product on the exchange platform.

CERC has also issued a discussion paper on strengthening and scheduling timelines for shortening the shortening the scheduling timelines for real-time market. The paper proposes reduction of RTM auction window from 15 minutes to 5 minutes.

Today, for submission of bid in the RTM market, a 15-minute window is provided. They are proposing to reduce it to 5 minutes, and thereby reducing the gate closure time from 75 minutes to 50 minutes, because they will cut down the time in the other activities also after the RTM market.

I'm sure this is going to make forecasting and managing the renewables more efficiently, and also this will enhance liquidity on the exchange platform. On market coupling front, CERC has issued draft regulations in the month of April, and they have proposed Grid India as the market coupling operator.

Following the submissions and comments, public hearing was held on 10th of June. While the details on the market coupling will be shared in the detailed presentation by my colleague, Mr.

Rohit Bajaj, I would like to mention that we continue to engage actively with the policymakers and regulators, and also are exploring the legal recourse available to us. CERC, in their order of July 2025, they had mentioned that they want to implement market coupling in the day-ahead market.

They also had mentioned that in case of real-time market, since the timelines are very tight for the bidding and the auction process, this will be considered subsequently. As of now, the intent is to do the coupling in the day-ahead market.

In fact, in the real-time market, after this discussion paper for shortening the scheduling I mean reducing the gate closure time from 75 to 50 minutes, where the RTM bidding time will be reduced from 15 to 5 minutes, I think the coupling will become further difficult. In case of day-ahead market, in the last 3 years, we have done a lot many customer-centric activities.

We have done a lot of technological interventions, and as a result of that, we believe that our customer engagement has significantly increased. We have done API integration with our customers for the purpose of bidding and also for the purpose of back office, which will provide a tight coupling in fact with the customers.

We have also done a lot of work in providing the data analytics to our customers. We keep interacting with the customers, understand their problem, and try to provide solutions to them.

I'm sure with the kind of trust which we have built over the years in this last 18 years, we should be able to retain significant market share in even in the day-ahead market. I'm sure that even if coupling is implemented, it may not have significant impact as far as the market share is concerned.

Day-ahead market In fact, there was a time 6-7 years back, day-ahead market used to be almost about 95% of our total volume. In the last 5-6 years, after the introduction of real-time market, G-DAM market, day-ahead market share has been reduced to almost about 40%.

Today, day-ahead market is constituting only 40% of our total volume. In this market, after the coupling, with the customer-centric activities done by us, even if there is an impact, it may be maybe about 20%, 30%, 40%.

As far as business is concerned, I don't think it is going to be a significant. While IEX business and financial performance will be detailed by Mr.

Rohit Bajaj and Mr. Vineet Harlalka, I would say that our performance continues to be very robust.

FY 2026 saw annual electricity trade of 141 billion units, a growth of 17% over the previous year, and with consolidated revenue growth of 13.6% at ₹747 crore, and our PAT was ₹492 crore, with an increase of almost about 15%. The real-time market was the standout growth story, where the volume increase was almost about 14 41%.

Today, RTM market is as big as the day-ahead market. For the first quarter of this year, we achieved electricity volume of 37.5 billion units, registering a growth of 16%, and our consolidated revenue was ₹202.8 crore, while the PAT was ₹134.8 crore, with a growth of 12%.

On the product front, we continue to engage with CERC for approval of new products. We have already filed application with CERC for approval of green RTM market, peak power for the DAM and RTM, and also for enhancing the term-ahead market contracts from 3 months to 11 months.

I'm sure as and when these contracts are approved, it will lead to further deepening of the electricity market on the exchange platform. Friends, as you are aware, our gas exchange has completed 5 years of operation, and they have also Their business performance has also improved significantly.

In this last year, they did a volume of almost about 76.8 million MMBtu of gas with a profit of ₹42 crore and with a growth of 28% on year-on-year basis. In this quarter also, they have achieved a trade of 27.5 million MMBtu of gas with profit of ₹16 crore.

As you may be aware that we have already filed DRHP for IPO of the IGX, and we hold today 47.3% in the IGX. As per the PNGRB regulations, we will have we have to bring down this to 25% within 5 years.

In fact, this 5-year period was over in the month of December 2025. We took extension of 1 year from the PNGRB, and therefore, to sell this 22.3% equity, we have offered that in the IPO.

As in as envisaged by the honorable Prime Minister, India aims to achieve energy independence by the year 2047. As India marches towards its net zero target of 2070, power exchanges will have a significant role to play in the country's energy landscape.

With India's GDP projected to grow at a rate of 6% to 7% per annum in the near term, power demand is expected to approach almost about 2,700 billion units with a peak demand of 388 GW by FY 2032. Power exchanges remains poised for growth and innovation.

India's pow- India's power sector continues to experience a fast-paced transition. The government's focus on green hydrogen, data centers, AI economy, electric vehicles, pump storage, battery energy storage, all these will lead to innovation of new products and market segments on the exchange platform.

Battery energy storage systems and FDRE contracts, round-the-clock tenders are gaining traction. To further deepen of the green market, we have continued to advocate market-based options for the RE capacity additions like CFDs, virtual PPAs, and merchant models.

Going forward, with large-scale rooftop solar, we see the emergence of local energy markets, local energy market ecosystems where exchanges will play a central role. I think P2P is one such activity which is going to happen in the near future.

Friends, with the Ministry of Environment, Forest Forest and Climate Change having issued final notification on the greenhouse gas emissions intensity targets for obligated entities across seven sectors, which are aluminum, chlor-alkali, cement, pulp and paper, petrochemicals, petroleum, and textile, along with draft targets for iron and steel, these developments have laid the foundation for trading of carbon credits. We are expecting that the carbon trading to start within this calendar year.

In fact, BEE has said that they want to start it by 1st of October of 2026. We are also now taking forward India's first coal exchange.

Ministry of Coal has already notified the rules for the coal exchange, and we, with the approval of the board, have already incorporated Indian Coal Exchange, separate company for this purpose. As per the rules, within 6 months of operation of coal exchange, coal cannot be traded on any of the e-auction platforms or or cannot be sold through the marketplace.

That means all all coal transactions will have to happen through the exchange platform only. Today, we find that almost about 120 million ton of coal is being traded through the e-auction platforms and other marketplace.

In fact, the captive and the merchant coal production itself has increased to almost about 20 mil- 200 million ton, and this is going to increase further. This will provide lot of big opportunity for the coal exchange.

Ministry of Mines, they have also come out with draft regulations for mineral exchange, because this government is trying to bring in transparency in trade of all the commodities. I'm sure this also will be notified very shortly.

This will provide another diversification option for us. With this, I would now request Mr.

Rohit Bajaj to share his presentation. Thank you.

Thanks. Good evening, everyone.

Thanks for joining today. It's my pleasure to once again welcome you all to this IEX Analysts Meet.

We sincerely appreciate your continued interest in the company, and today evening, we want to share our perspective with you. I'm going to talk about business in next 30-40 minutes, and the presentation has three is structured into three different parts.

First, I would be talking about IEX group entity as a group entity. In last couple of years, we have evolved from just being electricity trading platform or electricity exchange to a marketplace which is quite diversified, which is dealing into various energy commodities, and also into various environmental products like issuance of I-REC, RECs, carbon credits, and the energy commodity also includes something like coal, which we are going to start very soon.

These all all of these have strategic importance. They play a critical role.

Then also, we will be touching upon overview of how they are going to how the opportunity space lies for them. Now second part is related to our perspective on the energy sector.

What's happening, where it is going, and where lies opportunity for us. You will agree with me, globally as well as in India, things are changing at a very fast pace.

Supply supply-demand dynamics has changed completely. In fact, as we all know, in India, majority of the power is traded under long term.

This has been true for conventional. This has been true for all the renewable technologies that we have seen.

Suddenly, this model has also changed. Today, majority, almost 80% of the battery BESS, those got commissioned in the country, all of them are majority of them are traded on merchant basis.

They are using exchange platform for the purpose of selling that. The they these are all big names.

They have huge plans. Market is moving towards more and more it is becoming more and more granular.

Earlier, it used to be 1 hour. We started with 15 minutes.

In fact, in Europe, very recently, they moved to 15-minute trading. In India, we are talking about 5 minutes.

We are moving closer to the real time. 15 1 hour before, we are trading in the real-time market, and real-time market has been growing leaps and bounds.

Suddenly, now CERC has released one paper where they wanted to bring it even closer to the real-time dispatches. The 70 minutes period which is there, 75 minutes, has been proposed to reduce to 50 minutes.

These are some of the global trends, and we are not far behind. One thing I must say, and you will appreciate, in all these trends, one thing is common.

Market is definitely going to play very important role. Gone are the days when we will have 100% flexible long-term PPAs.

It is no more It is not going to be there. In fact, in the current long-term PPAs, government has come out with the new policy initiatives where all the unrequisitioned surplus is coming to the market.

These are some of the noteworthy changes. We will be talking about it.

Then finally, we would be spending some time on detailed discussion on what are the grow growth drivers for our electricity business. This is our bread and butter.

90% of revenue or 80% plus revenue comes from there, and we would be dealing in detail with this. There are certain product which are there in the pipeline.

We will evaluate how the performance how has been the performance of various product segment. What's new happening on the policy side.

There is NEP, which is there, draft, which is going to finalize very soon. There is Act amendment, which is being talked about.

All these places, there are certain elements which we can discuss here, is going to benefit market as a whole. This is where we are today.

IEX, as got established in 2008, publicly listed in 2017, leading energy exchange for all these years. We have always been maintaining 80-85% market share.

Huge participant base, 9,000-plus participants. All the distribution utilities are with us.

All the renewable merchant generators are trading with us. All the conventional IPPs are also registered with us.

Then last year, we did 141 billion unit trade, which is little over 8% of the total consumption. Earlier, we used to talk about 4, 5, 6, but we have reached a decent level.

At 8% through platform is not a small number. We are growing very fast, and you know what sort of growth we have seen in the last couple of years.

Then we have IGX, which is our associate company, established in 2020. This is the only natural gas exchange which we have today in the country.

Here also, one unique thing is there. Everybody who deals with natural gas is registered with us.

There are 50-plus all PSUs, private sector companies, all of them are there. There are 200 registered clients with us, and they participate on daily basis.

77 million unit MMBtu we have done last year. Growth was 30 around 30%, and year before, growth was about 50%, and PAT number today stands at about ₹42 crore.

ICX, though the numbers are modest as of now, but this has very strategic importance in our overall portfolio. Now this is our play on the environmental product side.

I-REC issuance, we are doing that. We are the sole issuer of I-RECs in the country.

Numbers have grown. We can You can see that 200% growth we have registered last year.

Couple of things which are happening here which we would be dealing in the subsequent slide, which makes it quite a promising segment going forward. Indian Coal Exchange, Mr.

Goel talked about it. We have a detailed slide.

We will be dealing with that. The current rules provides for good liquidity right from the day one.

If e-auction platform are not going to be there, somebody like mjunction and MSTC, those who are trading almost 70-80 million tons of coal in a year, if those are not going to be there, then exchange is going to be the direct beneficiary. Then there is so much happening on the commercial coal side, so much happening on the captive side.

Today, captive coal producers are also allowed to sell up to 50% of their total production in the market. These are some of the development which we are hopeful that with these rules in place, the time has come when we should be creating a multiple buyer-seller model, moving away from e-auction platforms, coming to the exchange model where the real price discovery can happen, and participant can take advantage of the liquidity which will be created.

IEX, one thing is for sure, and you will agree with me, 6-7% is what the growth has been projected for coming years. The electrification of economy is happening in a big way.

Renewable capacity getting added. Data centers, very promising ones, where we are seeing a lot of demand we have seen in many other countries.

In India also, it is it has started. Per capita, we are at quite a low level, 1,300 something.

This has set to increase by 2030. It should be 2,000, going beyond up to '47, it should be 4,000.

These numbers are indicating that there would be growth, and if there is growth, then platform like ours, who is a leading player, who is a leading electricity trader, will get benefited by that. IGX, as I mentioned, the government vision is to increase the basket which is currently at 6% to 15% by 2030.

Again, there are multiple factors which will decide whether we will reach there or not. Geopolitical situation which is there, there has been some major we suffered this year.

Going forward, vision is very clear. To accommodate more and more renewable, we need flexibility in the system.

Now this is one technology which can provides flexibility. Gas can ramp up easily, it can ramp down quite easily.

Pricing definitely is a challenge, but yes, there is a vision. Let's see where we reach.

Infrastructure is expanding. More and more lines are getting commissioned.

We are creating multiple hubs for this trading, and domestic gas production has also I won't say increased significantly, but it has started participating on the exchange platform. There is some opportunity available for ICX.

I would again say this is very small, modest numbers, but the granularity will increase. Today when we say I-REC or carbon market or let's say RECs, these certificates are not time-stamped.

These certificates are traded on the basis of total renewable that has been injected, irrespective of the fact whether it was injected during the daytime, evening time, or nighttime. When the counterparty, the obligated entity, is buying these certificates, they are also not accounting for these certificates on the basis of time or hour.

Timestamping is the new thing, whether it is GHG Protocol, Scope 2, which is about electricity, or RE100 or SBTI claims. The granularity is something which is going to be there, and this pave way for deepening of this market also.

There would be more issuance. The probably evening peak pricing would be very high, and when the pricing would be high, there would be more investment which will come, there would be more participants would be there who would be participating for the purpose of issuance.

Coal exchange, as I said, 1.2 billion is what we have today. It is expected to Coal production in the country is expected to grow up to 2 billion million ton by FY 2035, and this provides for a marketplace.

Definitely, there is a need, multi-buyer, multi-seller, transparent ecosystem, where robust price discovery could be there. It would not be so robust right from day one, slowly, slowly liquidity will be built, and subsequently, supply would be there, quality improvement would be there.

Exchanges would also be dealing with margins, ensuring that timely payments are made. There are so many issues in the coal sector.

Some of those issues would be solved when exchanges will play their part. Moving on to exchange business, and let's see what ecosystem looks like now.

This is one thing which we share every time, and one thing definitely is there, there is a focus on cleaner generation, numbers are ever-increasing, but still, predominantly, we are coal-based generating. Overall mix is coal-based.

70% is coming from coal-based now, though in capacity terms, we are a little over 50%, but energy terms, we are still at about 24-25%. Challenges are there to be seen.

It is so difficult. We are we quite often we heard about the solar power not getting evacuated from the solar parks.

That's a very common thing that we we deal with. Though we have very good transmission network in the country, it's an integrated market, all 13 bid areas that we have in the country all are integrated, there is one price discovery 99.9% of the time, but still, there are pockets, intra-state pockets which are there, where evacuation of solar power is a concern, and a lot of solar power getting curtailed.

Now curtailing solar power is a national loss. We have created those solar parks, generation is there.

If we are not able to use, it is going down the drain, which means it is not getting generated, and sometimes, when you are not able to control it, it is being generated, and then generators IPPs are paying penalty on it because they are not able to evacuate it. This is a serious concern for which green corridors are being created, and once we have these corridors in place, operational, it will bring more power on the centralized platform like ours, and there would be more supply during the daytime.

Even today, there is decent supply available, but as far as transmission system is concerned, we have world's largest network, extremely trouble-free. Last 10 years last 12 years, we have tripled the regional transmission capacity.

Today, it is at 120 GW. It is set to grow to 168 GW by FY 2032, and these numbers are remarkable, very good numbers.

Distribution and the consumption side, the last mile, here we have seen there were issues, but here also, some improvement is there. Reforms are underway.

Last last decade, and I would say couple of decades, there has been so many reforms which were introduced by the central government. Some of these things have worked, and precisely for that reason, we have seen the AT&C losses have come down to 15% level now, which was the target sometime back.

In fact, if you see some of these private distribution companies, I was discussing with BRPL, BYPL, they are at the level of 6%, and it is no more AT&C, it is only technical. If they can achieve, others can also achieve.

The rating has been improving, financial parameters are getting better day by day. If I compare FY 2024 versus FY 2025, in FY 2024, there were 16 discoms those who were rated A+ and A, but last year, this number has increased to 31.

This is definitely one very big achievement that we have seen. This was struggling sometime back, but the things are improving now.

Some more measures like LPS rule, late payment surcharge rule, has helped distribution company and also IPPs. Now they are getting payment in time.

When they are getting payment in time, they are able to buy coal and then supply to distribution company, and when they are getting cheap supplies coming from the PPAs, the overall cost burden is going down. It is good for system as a whole.

We are also playing our part by ensuring ensuring that that discipline is there, and LPS rule is working in a in a quite a very big way. Another development which is happening here is distribution companies, in a limited way, in fact, they are starting to deploy technological more and more technology-based tools.

Now these tools are helping them optimize more. These tools are also helping them to forecast their demand as well as their generation pattern in more accurate way, and by doing that, they are able to do the bring down the cost of balancing, which was very high earlier, which is slowly, slowly coming down.

This is where we want to go. Currently FY 2026, total 533 GW of capacity, expected to go to 958 GW, and 66% capacity would be green capacity, which means that major traction is going to be on the green side, but we need baseload requirement also.

We are a little different from other countries, other big countries where demand is not increasing so much, our demand is increasing, we have to invest in coal and thermal capacity also. RE generation mix is expected to increase to 40% from currently 26.

Overall, in energy terms also, this number is going to be huge. 66% in terms of installed capacity, and then bigger smaller number, 40% in terms of energy mix.

Now this is one important slide. I would be dealing with some component in detail, but overall landscape is like this.

When we talk about energy transition, when we talk about evolution of marketplace, one of the major element here is technology progress. We have seen what has happened in case of solar, what has happened in case of wind.

The prices came down drastically in last so many years. Localization is happening now, and distribution companies are no more buying solar alone.

They are coming out with FDREs, they are coming out with hybrid models, they are they wanted hybridization with the BESS and other things. One thing is sure, technology is ever-evolving, things are changing fast.

The second thing that we have seen in last couple of years, there has been major drop in the battery storage cost. 10.83, probably each one of us will remember that, the JSW tender, where the price discovered was ₹10.83 lakh per megawatt per month, that number has come down to less than ₹2 lakh.

I have one slide which I'll be sharing with you. Because of that, and for for country like us, where our hydro resources are limited, where we don't have much of gas to generate because of the cost, the balancing thing and the flexibility thing is completely missing.

Now it is very important for us to have BESS in place so that we can the the system operator can manage the grid in a better way, and grid security can be ensured. India Energy Stack, a lot has been talked about this aspect also, similar to what we have achieved in case of UPI in the financial markets.

This is something which we are trying to do in electricity. The seamless transition of data, the creation of local markets, peer-to-peer trade, all these things will happen once we have that system in place.

We are also part of this initiative as a as a sector expert, and participating in development of this new new technology which is there. AI-enabled demand price forecasting, advance analytics, we have also we are also extending that.

Amit will cover that. We have created certain chatbots which are AI-enabled.

Similarly, distribution companies also, to the extent possible, they have started doing it and taking advantage of the technology which is there. Draft National Electricity Policy talks about competition, introducing competition, open access.

Draft Electricity Amendment Bill also talks about certain sectors where all the charges we should remove and bring open access in place. Open access is very good for sector as a whole, it brings competition, and then it provides opportunity for us to serve these consumer, whether C&I or consumers like railways, metros, and data center, and what not.

Renewable consumption obligation targets are very stiff. These trajectories available till 2030, and because of these stiff targets, this makes a compelling case for all the obligated entity to come and participate in the exchange to buy and meet their obligation.

Green Energy Open Access is not moving very fast as expected as it was initially anticipated, but things are starting, and this will also bring down the threshold limit. Today, threshold limit for open access is 1 MW.

Green Energy Open Access provides for 100 kW customer also to come on exchange and trade or not only exchange, they can do bilateral also, trade power and take advantage of open access. CCTS, carbon trading, something which we have discussed.

Electricity derivative has started, not taken off in a big way, but today, if you want to hedge, there is a tool available, you can go there. It's The progress is a little slow, but I'm sure as more and more participants, C&I consumer will participate in open access, they will also start to move towards derivatives to hedge their position.

PM Surya Ghar Yojana has changed the complete landscape of how solar power is getting added in the country. Earlier, it used to be only grid-scale solar which was added.

Today, in fact, in last so many couple of one year, little more than 1 year, there are so many more than so 5 lakh household which got converted into this particular scheme. 30 GW is what we have added in last 2 years.

Total number is 30 GW. Majority, almost 80% is what we have added in last 2 years.

This has also taken off in a big way. Then there is shift towards RE storage, electrification of economy, which is EVs.

We cannot leave aside leave behind EV. That has also started to happen now.

Many states are coming with the policies to promote EV, more so after this Iran war, where we have seen it is we are dependent on energy from outside world, we must create our own capacity, and EV is answer to that. Railways, data center is what we are also trying to do.

Distributed generation is also coming in a big way. Small, small areas where you have generating stations, there are prosumers, there are DERs, and if you have those places, those things in place, then it provides for or it paves ways for creation of local energy market.

Today, we have central market, but we might have to move in the direction of creating intra-state local markets where smaller participants can also play their role. Energy is coming evolving as a service.

We are talking about price arbitrage. I have few slides which I'll be sharing.

FDRE, derivatives in the form of contract for differences, VPPAs, these has got stamp from CERC. Now this has been acknowledged as one tool where C&I consumer can enter into these contracts and take advantage of green power penetration which is happening.

Then we have also already discussed that P2P trade. Nationwide automated, transparent trading platform, physical delivery.

This is what we have been we have been dealing with. For derivatives, we have tie-up with MCX.

NSE is also doing derivatives, but we are dealing purely pure play with the delivery-based contracts, renewable energy certificates, energy savings certificates, carbon credits which are expected to come. We work very closely with state regulators.

In fact, we are on the board of 13 state advisory boards, and here we tell them how states can take advantage of the market which is there. You must you must have heard about zero price in the real-time market.

When power is available at zero price or less than ₹1 or 50 paise sort of a price level, then why generating should station should be why distribution company should be generating their own power? They should replace that power with the market where it is so cheaply available.

Such things we educate them, we tell them. In many cases, we tell them they should open up their market to C&I of C&I consumer, allow open access.

Thereby, they can save a lot on the subsidy burden for the state and also on the cross-subsidy burden for the regulator for in the tariff. These are some of the things which which we do.

We are also on the board of Association of Power Exchanges, where 40 global power exchange participate, and there we do a lot of cross-learning. We learn a lot from US market, European market, Korean market, and other places, and try to implement whatever is possible in our case.

As I mentioned, we have all the participants which are there. I'll just quickly touch upon this.

We most of us are aware, day-ahead market is what we started with in 2008. 2009, term-ahead market came.

REC market started in 2011. Energy Certificate Energy Saving Certificates, not a very liquid market, again, not a very big segment, but this was done in 2017.

2020 was one significant, remarkable year for us because we introduced two new products which are very promising. In fact, we are seeing very good transaction traction even now.

Real-time market was introduced in 2020. Similarly, green market also started in 2020.

'21, cross-border trade was introduced. Today, Nepal, Bhutan, they are participating both on the buyer as well as sell side.

Volumes are small because their size is small, but again, it is not so small, 3%, 4%, 5% sort of monthly average transactions are happening. Term-ahead contracts got extended up to 3 months in 2022 after the Supreme Court case got settled.

And '23, we introduced high-price day-ahead market, term-ahead market, and ancillary market. Unfortunately, all these three markets are not doing very well because liquidity is not there.

Then few things are in pipeline, which I would be dealing in detail. Now if we have to see the product mix, then few years back, in fact, 10 years back, FY 2016, day-ahead market contribution in overall mix was 95%.

Today, that number has reduced to 39. Why?

Because we have seen there has been so many new product introduction, that has brought down this number to less than 40. RTM, which is the most promising segment that we have today, has grown to as high as 34% last year.

We have seen 40% growth last year, and before that also, the run rate was about 30-35% growth that we are seeing every year. Similar is the situation in this Q1.

We are up in RTM segment by about 25%. This is one segment which has been doing very well.

Then TAM contracts, green market, that is again has become substantial. This traction started just 2 years back, and today, it is about 7-8%.

Now coming moving to the growth drivers, there are five-six growth drivers which are there, and some of them we are we will deal in detail. First thing is about growth.

6-7% GDP growth is doable, and we know that there is a strong correlation between GDP growth and electricity consumption. There are outlier year.

Last year was outlier. It was flat in terms of electricity growth, but GDP growth was there, 7% plus.

Q1 is surprising. The growth is same, in fact, less as compared to Q4, but electricity demand grew by 11%, more than 10% in in the month of June, similarly, 10% in the month of May.

This sudden increase was weather also play very important role. There was heat waves, there was delayed monsoon, and that helped this.

If not 11%, but 5 5.5% is what we are forecasting, not we are, CEA has forecasted for next 7-8 years, which means that per capita consumption is going to grow, overall demand is going to grow. Now this is good for us, because when demand is growing, we are able to capture large part of incremental demand on our platform.

If you see, power exchange all power exchange put together grew by 18% last year. Demand growth was just 1%.

Whatever incremental growth was there, majority of that comes to exchange because, the long-term PPAs are not happening at the same pace. Even if PPAs are happening, then commissioning of those plant will take 5-6 years.

That time is available for us where the distribution companies are selling, they are buying, the diversity is playing its role, and we are able to get that volume. This is one area where we are expecting huge growth.

EVs' participation would be there. AC consumption is expected to grow to 9x level by 2050, IEA estimates are there.

The second thing which we always talk about, and I I always give this example, when COVID happened, suddenly demand dropped by 25%. In that particular year, our volumes increased by 20%.

How is How this is possible? Because when demand dropped, there were no buyers, prices also dropped.

Majority of the time, prices were less than ₹3. In fact, for complete year, average price was 2.8 that particular year.

At that price point, there was huge potential for available for distribution companies to replace their costlier power and buy cheaper power from exchange. You can see this illustration on the right-hand side.

Any distribution company, they will have multiple generating stations where they have PPAs. They will have their own generating stations, they will have NTPC allocation, they will have IPPs who are supplying to them.

On the basis of variable cost, they always stack them. They try to do merit order dispatch.

What they do, the cheaper generating stations, they give full schedule, costlier generating stations, they give less schedule. Here we have taken example where there is a plant which is generating variable cost is 5, another plant 4.5, 4, 3.5, like this.

Now fixed cost is something which you have to pay on annual basis, irrespective of whether you are drawing power from that particular generation or not. Fixed cost is sunk cost, you have to pay.

Now you what you have to do is, you have to compare constantly, first you have to do it on day-ahead basis, then you have to do it on RTM basis, real-time basis. You have to constantly compare variable cost of these plants with with the market.

Now we have taken one example, when the DAM average price is ₹4. What distribution company can do?

They can place their bid at let's say ₹5, trying to replace GENCO 1. If their bid is cleared, they will shut down this plant, they will put this plant under reserve shut down, and this has been shut, now they can buy they can take power from the market, because they their bid was at 4.

Since the price is 4, entire thing is cleared, now they have option to replace that. Now every time this may not be possible, what we have seen in last couple of months when the prices were very high.

There is another opportunity available. During the daytime, even in the most most high-demand period, crunch period, average price during the daytime was ₹2.

Now when you have daytime price at ₹2, and your generating station is at ₹5, and generating station variable cost is same round-the-clock basis, what you can do is, at least during the daytime, back down your generation and to that extent buy from the market. This is precisely what we tell them.

We do a lot of advocacy with the distribution utility, and you can see these numbers. AP saved ₹2,350 crore, this was in the COVID times.

Very recently in FY 2026, Telangana saved almost about ₹700 crore by doing just this. This is such a great opportunity for all distribution companies, and there are so many case studies, we publish them, we tell them how they can take advantage of it.

More and more state utilities, they are they are taking help of consultants, they are deploying tools, we are also helping them by creating or helping them in the way of implementing some IT solutions. By doing that, and the overall potential is huge.

Up to 10% of the power can be replaced by participating in the market. 10% of the power which is tied up under long-term PPA, and that number is 85%.

Currently we are 8%, similar sort of potential exists where the replacement can be done. Leave aside months like summer months when the prices peak pricing are very high, but even in those months, there is great opportunity to replace the solar power.

Now second opportunity which comes for exchange is in the form of regional diversity. We know that there are certain states where the solar presence is there, places like Gujarat, Rajasthan, wind presence is there in Tamil Nadu, some other have very high hydro potential, states like Uttarakhand, HP.

Demand is never the same. Demand is always fluctuating.

It may be high during the daytime, peak time again it will increase, for all these hilly station hilly states, it will go down drastically in the nighttime. Your generation is not matching your demand curve.

Many a times, you will have surpluses, many a times, you will have shortages. There would be a scenario when South is in surplus and North is in shortage, similarly vice versa also.

Diversity is where the central platform like IEX can take advantage of it. Today, if you see minutely see the numbers who are the big participants, you will find that more than 50% of sell actually comes from state utilities, discoms, they are the biggest sellers.

80% of buy or 85% of the buy is by distribution utilities. Discom is buying, discom is selling.

They have they have a lot of power available under PPA, but there is a diversity, somebody is surplus, they are selling, somebody is deficit, they are buying, and the because of that, lot of we are able to gain lot lot on account of diversity. Second thing is, demand shifting is happening.

Regulators today are pushing for demand shifting. We have seen in case of Maharashtra, TOD tariff, more than 20% rebate has been given if you are if you are buying during the daytime, evening the 20% tariff is more.

Similarly, it is being done everywhere. Why it is so?

Because during the daytime, so much sell is available, and you can see in this graph, yellow portion, a lot of sell is available during the daytime at exchange, similarly and why it is available on exchange, because all states are surplus. When they are surplus, they are trying to sell, but in the evening, there is a lot of demand which is there, and we are not able to meet the full demand.

They are trying to shift their demand from evening to day hours. Now if they are doing that, we have so much surplus available.

If you are shifting the demand, that demand will get cleared, that bids will get cleared because the prices are so low. That's another opportunity which is available for us, and you can see in the bottom, blue is demand met for 24 hours on 30th May 2019.

It was almost a flat, straight line, and you can see in the evening, peak demand was there. If you see now, which is 2026, peak demand is somewhere near 3:00 PM, when the solar generation is there.

Evening is not so high. Evening is still high, but a lot of shifting has happened.

Wherever possible, state distribution utilities are shifting their at least agriculture demand to the daytime. By certain estimate, there is 50 GW of additional potential is there where shifting can happen, and this can be done not in a year, it will take some time, by FY 2035, we expect this shifting can be done.

As I said, capacity addition is going to be there. We have seen a lot on the renewable side, but on the thermal side also, 80 GW of capacity addition is in the pipeline.

41 GW is already under construction where PPAs has been signed, there is another 20 GW where the contract has been awarded to the suppliers, and 16 GW is under various stage of planning. So 80 GW capacity will come, which will help us in meeting our baseload requirement as we said we are set to grow, and this is again by some way or other will come to exchange.

If not directly, through through the diversity thing that I have explained, state distribution utility will be bringing this capacity on the exchange platform. Similarly, as the coal as the thermal capacity addition would be there, coal production is also going to increase, and the coal captive mines and the the current e-auction thing is going to help that.

Now another very important new market model which which has evolved, which I touched upon, where majority of the developers who are operating in BESS space, they are trying to create merchant capacity. Why they are doing this?

Because market is providing a lot of arbitrage to them, and you can see I have consider I have brought two there are two graphs. One is representing summer month, May, and second is representing winter month, which is June.

You can see this, just a minute, let me use pointer. You can see here, there is so much surplus solar power available during the daytime, and because of that, prices are going below ₹2.

This is 2, and you can see the price is below ₹2 during the daytime. Every day, almost 90-95% of the days in a year, evening prices are ₹10.

Our cap is 10, and this prices is being achieved almost on daily basis. When you buy, let's say I have a BESS available, I buy during the daytime and sell during the evening time.

This delta is available. I can sell at 10, buy at 2, sort of ₹8 is what I can make out of it.

Now if you see, in the winter months, instead of one, you get two cycles. Winter months, nighttime, there is no virtually no demand.

You don't need India is not so cold, you don't need heating. Even fans are not there, air conditioning is out of question.

You get very low prices during the nighttime. Early morning, there are 2-3 hours when the prices are very high because there is a heating, geyser, and other loads which are there, more so in Northern India.

Then during the daytime, when there is a lot of solar, again there is a dip. Evening peak is always there, because this is the time when commercial, domestic, everything overlap.

There is a lightning load additionally coming, and there is a peak which is there. This is also a time when solar has gone down, and thermals generation is being ramped up.

During this ramp-up process, it takes time, and during this time, it touches ₹10. There are two peaks which are available in the winter months, there are there is one peak which are which is available in the summer months.

We have done analysis for FY 2024, '25, '26. We have to be mindful of the fact that '26 was outlier year, very low prices, no demand increase, very good weather, very good monsoon, everything was superb, well placed.

You probably we will not get similar year in some times to come. Even after that, you can see there are 545 cycles which were possible in the last year.

One cycle, 365 days, and second cycle also quite a quite a few days. About 1.5 times, I can 1.5 cycle on an average, we can operate.

What sort of arbitrage was available? For every cycle, arbitrage available in FY 2026 was 4.81.

Similarly, it was 5.03 in FY 2025, and 3.80 in FY 2024. Now this arbitrage, if you compare it with cost of battery for two-cycle operation, this is beautiful, this is very, very good arbitrage.

Now considering this, and another thing is how this will this arbitrage will be there going forward. Solar any which ways is going to come, whether in the form of Kusum or in the form of rooftop or somewhere or other, solar addition is going to be there.

Evening peak problem will remain, because 80 GW that we are talking today, which is under pipeline, it is going to take time. Majority of that capacity will come '31, '32, '33 sort of timeline.

There is a window available where this arbitrage would be there, and there are players who are seeing this and taking advantage of it. Cost for two-cycle operation is much below 3.5, and if you are able to get 4.81 sort of 4 4.5 sort of arbitrage available from the market, it makes a beautiful case.

Similarly, if you see 4 hours one cycle, one cycle in a day, there also there is a great opportunity which is there, and it's a no-brainer, as per the current prices, you have to take call on the basis of your assumption which are there for the future. Yes, there is huge potential which exist, and precisely for this reason, whatever capacity has come, it has come on the merchant route.

This is what I was referring to. Acme has started commissioned 3,200 MWh capacity, which is standalone merchant basis.

Juniper has done 500, again standalone merchant basis. Adani has done 3,400, which are there again on the merchant basis.

Gujarat has done some capacity which is under PPA. Similarly, there are certain pilots which are done by Delhi discom, TATA as well as BYPL, BRPL, where they have created small capacity which are tied up under PPA or their own capacity.

This is the major chunk which is there, and entire thing is under long-term PPA. Government is supporting this in a big way.

There is a financial support to the tune of more than ₹9,000 crore, where BESS VGF scheme has been launched, and all tenders, what we have seen recently, are under that particular scheme. A lot of action there, new tenders are there, many of these states are coming forward and trying to secure this capacity.

Still, on the basis of what we have seen numbers, it's quite promising, there is a lot of opportunity which is available, and developers are looking at it. Another thing which we we know that the FDRE is firm and dispatchable renewable energy is what is distribution companies are considering today.

They no more want that solar profiles, they already everybody has that. Sometimes, you can see this curve, April, they want more power during night and evening peak, and less during the daytime.

When you have such requirement, you can come you can come out with a tender of FDRE, there would be participation, prices would be high, it would not be 2.70, 2.60 sort of thing, it would be more than ₹4, ₹5, ₹6, depending on your profile, depending on the conditions of the of the tender. This again is one segment which is happening in a big way.

There are few things which is good for exchange under this particular segment. When somebody when developer is participating in FDRE, to meet this particular profile, he has to create a lot of overcapacity.

In the month of May, June, July, August, when wind is there, he can easily do that with the help of wind. Some other months, when wind is not there at all, he has to be dependent on BESS or hydro or something else or probably buying from the market.

This provides FDRE provides market opportunity both on the buy as well as sell side. On the buy side, there is to meet your commitment of providing that profile, you have to come to the market to buy sometimes RE power.

On the sell side, whatever surplus capacity you have created, and this surplus is huge, sometimes it is as high as 40-50%, that surplus capacity you can bring in the market to sell it at whatever price you can get. Since this is variable, this is uncertain, this is intermittent, you cannot enter into any bilateral contract.

Whatever surplus is there, you have to bring that particular thing to the market only. CFD we have been discussing for long, long time.

Some of some of you will agree with me, and very recently, one development has happened where SECI has come out with one pilot project where 500 MW of CFD-based contract will be created. Just to refresh your memories, CFD is where there is only power supply agreement which is there between SECI and developer, there is no PPA.

No state is entering into any sort of contract. What they will do, they will create that capacity and start selling it on exchange.

The price certainty would be given by SECI to the developer, again on the reverse auction basis. Let's say price discovered for let's take easy example of solar is 2.70, then 2.70 is what has been ascertained to the developer for next 25 years.

They will dispatch their power through market, they will not wait for PPAs to get signed. They will create that facility and start selling it on the market.

Whatever they realize from the market, balance will be paid by SECI to them. Let's say market realization is 2, then remaining 70 paise will be paid.

Market is paying to them on daily basis. SECI would be doing this adjustment on monthly basis.

Now let's say market realization is ₹3, then this 30 paise surplus will be parked with SECI, and whenever the it is deficit, they will be using it. There is a pool which is there.

Now pool will support the contract for difference model where is the surplus and deficit is taking care taken care. This has been launched.

All the power which would be generated here will come in the market. The current contract which is there is not solar.

Good news is it's not solar. Solar we already have so much supply available.

It is a peak power contract, which means there would be peak capacity addition which will happen, and this peak capacity will be coming to the market for dispatch, and those who need, those who are willing to pay in the market, they will be taking this capacity. This is one good thing which has happened, and VPPA is similar thing where you have contract for difference with the C&I consumer.

In VPPA, what happens is, C&I consumer enter into a contract and take only green attribute, the REC part of it. All the power which is generated is sold in the market.

How they C&I get power, they continue to buy power from the distribution utility. In both the models, whatever power generation is there, it comes on exchange, and both the models are very popular.

CFD is very popular in Europe, where Germany and UK particularly, they have added entire renewable capacity through this model. VPPA is very popular in US, where all biggies, Google and Amazons, they have multiple C&I contract.

In in fact, in India also, they have done few contracts, and their surplus power or entire generation is coming on exchange. Local energy market is what we discussed, because of DERs, because of prosumers, because of intra-state transactions, this is required, and exchanges will have great role to play there as well.

India Energy Stack will further enable it. Capacity market, again, is staff paper has been recently introduced by CERC, they have floated this, and they are talking about capacity market for short term, number one, then for reserve market, number two, and then also for long term, which can go up to 15 years.

It is being proposed to be done in three three different buckets, and it's a it's a staff paper as of now. Once the comments are today comments are invited, soon it will be finalized, and then this will also be there.

It is also great potential because currently we deal only with energy. Once we have this capacity market in place, utilities, they can buy capacity, and there is a dire need of this.

We have seen multiple cases where one of the utility, they forecasted some requirement for next 3 months, but monsoon was very good or something else happened, that demand never came. They ended up buying power at ₹8 and then finally came to exchange, and there were not many takers on exchange, they sold same power at ₹3.

Instead of buying energy beforehand for 3 months, it's a great idea to secure that by way of entering into a capacity contract. Now this would be something like you have entered into a capacity contract for 3 months, 500 MW, let's say, whenever you need that power, you have first right of refusal.

Morning 9:00 AM, you will tell that buyer that I have I am keeping this 500 MW, if you want, I will schedule it to you, else, I'll be selling it on exchange. Whatever quantity is scheduled, the tariff is in two-part, for the capacity reserved 3 months, there is a capacity charge, for every energy that is being generated and supplied to the beneficiary, there would be energy charge.

This is something which is required, and we are hopeful that this will also see light of the day in let's say 1 or 2 years' time. Ancillary market, we are already doing tertiary, but secondary market is also something which is being considered.

There is a requirement, and BESS is something which can play very important role, as and when this capacity is there, sizable number is there, we are the ancillary market is also going to be the bigger beneficiary. Some of the products which are in the pipeline, green RTM, currently RTM there is only one RTM, there is no HP-RTM or green RTM, but we have identified that some of the green power is being traded under RTM segment, and when it is traded there, neither buyer nor seller is getting advantage of the green attribute, because this particular segment, conventional RTM is not identifying power as a green.

When somebody is selling, he is not getting additional premium on selling green power, similarly, when the buyer is not getting premium because they are not able to meet their obligation. We have identified this and filed this.

Hearings have been done, the order is reserved. We expect this order, as and when it will come, we have our preparedness in place, as and when this will come, we should be able to launch this.

Another area is where we are seeing some opportunity is peak contracts. Peak pricing is very different from RTC or solar hour pricing.

There is a need for promotion of BESS through markets or PSPs through markets. There should be one special segment, and again, here also we have filed petition, there has been very good response from all the developers as well as distribution utility.

The hearings have been done, order is reserved. We expect this order to come very soon, and then we should be able to launch that.

Third contract which is in the pipeline is 11 months deep. Currently, it is up to 3 months, but we know that in India, there is a short-term seasonal requirement which is there.

Today, many people are targeting to buy power for Durga Puja period or Diwali period or coming winter period. Those transactions are happening.

We are not able to do that because we have a limitation of only up to 3 months. Once we have 11-month contract, there is another there is a deep market which is there, about 30-odd billion units which are traded, we should be able to get some chunk from there.

LPS rule we have discussed, all the unrequisitioned power which is there with central generating stations, they have to essentially bring this power on exchange, otherwise, they will not get their fixed charges. This is precisely what LPS rule is, and we are seeing good volume coming on exchange.

In fact, last full year, about 8 billion unit got we could trade. This was the cleared one.

Bid was very high, bid was 10 times of this, cleared one was also quite a decent number of 8 billion unit. 8 versus 141 billion unit what we did today in the complete year.

Currently, it is only central generating stations which are participating. IPPs and state generating stations will also come, this number will is set to grow.

In the first quarter, with the same central generating stations, we have done 3 billion unit. Optimization potential we have dealt in detail, where I have shown the illustration, lot of potential exists.

You can replace RTC power, you can replace daytime power. It is not only for distribution utility, same thing applies for C&I consumer also, wherever possible, they can also replace during the daytime.

Carbon trading is something which is again in the pipeline, and we expect that in financial year '27 itself, we should start trading in this particular thing also. Some policy initiatives, and both of them, whether it is draft National Electricity Policy or draft Electricity Amendment Bill, both the core of these two initiatives is to promote competition.

You will see there is a lot mention about deepening of the market, there is they are talking about competition, bringing at the last mile, which is if not retail immediately, but at least C&I should be open access should be allowed in the country as a whole. Charges are very high, charges related to open access, it should go down.

Some of the areas they identified like metro, railways, data center, where they are saying there is there should be restricted charges so that it can be promoted. I would again talk about this report which came in 2023, where they gave, and such report are once in a decade sort of a thing, where they gave road map how the market penetration will happen.

In the short term, they said, short term means their idea was up to 1 year, what could be done. They said in 1 year time, market ancillary market could be done, which has already happened, this came in 2023.

Then they said market-based RE, CFD, the point that we are discussing pilot, is nothing but market-based RE, which is which has been implemented now. Resource adequacy and integrated resource planning, this was rolled about rolled out about a year back.

All the states are pursuing it now. Wherever there are gaps, they are identifying how to fulfill it, this thing has also already being done.

Implementation of TOD and demand response, TOD we know that many states have come out with giving 20-25% discount during the daytime and charging heavily in the peak hour when the prices the power is not available. These aspect has also already been taken care.

Now medium term, which is 1 to 2 years, the idea was to increase share of RE addition through markets. CFD and VPPA are definitely one step in that direction.

Now BESS is already is also bringing renewable in some form or other because charging of BESS is going to be through solar, which is the cheapest power available, BESS will also bring renewable. Demand response, utility, this framework is there, is available today.

Some at state regulator level also, this is being created, and I would say this is in the pipeline, not much action we have seen, but definitely, this is something which is which will happen. Short-term capacity contracts, we have seen that staff paper has come, it should also it is running a little late, but should happen in 1 year's time.

Then market for secondary reserve. Tertiary reserves are being done.

When we have more BESS and more flexible resources available in the country, then we can think of having more secondary reserves also in the system. These are also the same thing.

We are the government is concerned about deepening of the market, and necessary actions have been taken. There is a road map available, and we are almost there, running a little late, but doing all the ticks, slowly, slowly, we are achieving everything.

Now coming to the burning topic of market coupling. There was order in the month of July last year, '25, in fact, just about a year back.

Just exactly a year back, 23rd July. Then that that order said that staff was directed to initiate the process of implementation of market coupling of day-ahead market.

They went to the extent of giving date also. They said this should be implemented by January 2026.

Now there were many flaws in this particular order, and we went to APTEL, we challenged this order. Some of the important things which we said was there was study done by NLDC, and the outcome of study, first of all, those studies were never published.

As per the initial earlier order, there was clear-cut guideline given to the NLDC, Grid India, to publish those studies on their website, which never happened. This was one thing, it was never made public.

Something which is not made public, nobody can see it, nobody can make comment on that. Second is, in this order, they mentioned that there is a saving to the tune of social welfare maximization to the increase in social welfare to the tune of 0.3%.

Now 0.3% is insignificant. There is 0.3% gain is no gain.

There are numerous studies which are available, and in fact, there are multiple solvers which are there which operate MILP, that we do, the algorithm which is used for the purpose of price discovery. You use different algorithm, result would be different.

You and every algorithm is operated for a given time. Our algorithm is set for 15 minutes.

If it will run for 15 minutes, after at the end of 15 minutes, whatever best result is there, it will publish that result, and that is not necessarily 100% optimized result. Now by any logic and every logic, you will find that 0.3% is something which is which is highly insignificant.

Entire order was on the basis of that, and we challenged it. When you are talking about social welfare gain of 0.3%, why in the study you have not mentioned what sort of price increase is going to happen, and this social welfare gain which is happening, is it for buyer or is it for seller?

Those things are also not given. It is not that we were asking from nowhere.

All those things were mentioned in the initial order. You will publish the welfare gain, you will publish the price.

Now suppose there is a welfare gain increase, and there is price also increase, which means that welfare gain is increasing for the seller, not for the buyer. We have done our own simulation, and precisely, this is what happening today.

In the 4 months, they have run this pilot, social welfare increase whatever has happened, it has happened for the seller, not for the buyer, and effectively, the price has gone up, and the price increase is much more than 0.3%. Now with that sort of study, with all these things not being made available to the public, there is no case going ahead, and precisely, all these things we challenged in the in the APTEL.

There were some technical points also. They said decision would be taken through regulation.

There was one 39 regulation which was there in the in the PMR, and subsequently, what happened, this order came from nowhere, they have decided on their own, and no justifications. In the earlier ones, the discussion paper, staff paper, there were certain questions they raised, they never dealt with those questions.

There were so many stakeholder comments which came. 70% of the people opposed it.

Those things were also not dealt with. There were so many lacunas which were there, there was transparency issue in the whole process, and precisely and for this reason, we went to APTEL.

In APTEL, lot many hearings happened, and finally, the order was released in on February 13th. In the order, the final outcome was, APTEL felt that IEX is not aggrieved at this point in time.

They said the process, regulatory process will be followed for the purpose of implementing market coupling, it will be done through the regulation, and during the process of regulation, if you are aggrieved, you should come to us. At that point in time, APTEL order was very simple, it was just one line, end of it, IEX, we are not dealing with all these issues, all the issues of merit, because IEX is not aggrieved at this point in time.

They went to the extent of saying that the order the July 23rd order is arbitrary, it is not serving anything, it is it was not required in first place. They said all those things in the in the order that they have given, but at the end, they said IEX at this point time in time is not aggrieved.

Then we went to Supreme Court challenging this particular aspect of it that we are aggrieved, and then APTEL must go into merit of it, where our case petition has been admitted, notice has been served, one hearing happened where the notice was served, and now on Monday, there is second hearing. That's the status as far as legal standing is concerned.

We are, as Mr. Goel said, we are dealing with all the policymakers, everybody, we are doing our advocacy.

At the same time, we are also exploring all the legal aspects, what can be done. There is one more thing which I would mention here before moving to the next.

Grid India recently has submitted comments on the draft PMR. This there was a order in July, and now recently, they came out with the draft Power Market Regulation Amendment, second amendment, where they said this is how coupling would be implemented.

These are three-pager where they said they put everything on the on the Grid India, and they said the Grid India would be preparing the procedure, and all those things, the earlier questions and everything will be dealt by them only. There Grid India themselves said they have raised certain points, and these are very serious points which I thought I'll share with you.

They said, first thing, scope is not clear. The pilot and everything was done only for DAM, but there is nothing called DAM market today.

Today market is I-DAM. What would be impact of three layers, green market, DAM market, green DAM, DAM, and HP-DAM on the total outcome, that is not clear.

They are seeking clarification, it should be done for DAM or it should be done for all the three things. This is very complex.

There is a lot of order carryforwards which are there. Those who want to buy green power, they shift their bid, they give us option to shift our bid from green to normal.

Similarly, seller also, they give multiple option to shift from here to here and here. This is different price formation, three different price formation, clarity is not there whether it is DAM or I-DAM.

Second thing, they mentioned that industry-grade, robust clearing engine software should be adopted, which should be scalable, number one, and which should be robust, robust enough to handle complex order types. Why they have written this?

Because in their report, they said they could not deal with some complex order type while doing the pilot study. Now the 0.3% which came, it came from a software which was not robust, it was incapable of dealing with certain order types, and also it was done post-facto basis.

It is not an industry-grade software, no audit was done. For for example, somebody like us, ours algorithm is being audit audited every year.

There are agencies which will come and audit it, and then say these numbers are fine. They what they created was being done on post-facto basis, and no audit was done, and in fact, it could not deal with all the different complex order type which was there.

This is another point which which they raised. In this order, in the draft PMR, they said now earlier they said the exchanges would be doing running the algorithm on round-robin basis, now they change the stand, they are saying Grid India would be MCO, market coupling operator.

Now Grid India has reservations there. They said, if you are if we are MCO, then there is a single point of failure.

It cannot happen. Even in Europe, where coupling has been done to take advantage of diversity, where coupling has been done to integrate different markets, there also, there is a lot of standbys which are there.

There are nine NEMOs who are operating this on round-robin basis, and there are so much multi-layering which is there. They said, in India also, it cannot be done, there should be multiple exchanges should also be allowed to do that.

If you are doing, so many of them are doing, then we must also consider the cost part of it. Four entities running software day in, day out, there is cost element to it.

We must compare whether 0.3% is justified depending on the cost that we are going to incur. They also said it's a big change, the procedure is to be created, and if that is to be done, there should be a steering committee who should overlook all all the changes or all the future developments.

Who should be part of this steering committee? CERC, Grid India, all power exchanges, some market monitors, external auditors should also be part of that.

It's a complex thing. It is not something which Grid India can do on its own.

It requires a lot of efforts and a lot of capacities to be created before doing that. Finally, they also said it it also involves a lot of inter-exchange settlement.

Today, business rules of all the exchanges are approved by CERC, but they are dealing with their own clients, their own members, sorry. Now if you are doing running coupling thing, then you have to deal exchanges have to deal with themselves.

There should be inter-exchange settlement which will happen, and those things cannot happen through procedures. There should be a regulation.

Tomorrow there is a dispute, Grid India procedure cannot deal with that dispute. It will go to some higher court.

It can only go to higher court when there is a some regulation which is there which is trying to deal with that. If it is not able to deal, then people will go to the next level.

That's on the coupling side. Moving to the last slide from my side, which is sort of summarizing what I have said.

End objective for our business initiative is to serve the customer, create customer value. This we are doing for distribution company more because they are the 80%.

C&I is a little smaller one, but here we are interacting with them, doing optimization, benchmarking, capacity building, a lot of workshops are being done by us. Similarly, C&I, we are still working on promoting open access, dealing with regulators, ensuring that C&I consumers can take advantage of the cost saving of the cheaper power which is available.

RE generators, suddenly merchant has become a buzzword. The otherwise, RE was also coming through merchant route.

Conventional generation is also in the form of URS, in the form of whatever little merchant capacity is there, they are coming to the market and taking advantage. REC is another segment where obligated entity are taking part and trying to monetize whatever capacity they have created and whatever certificates are issued by them.

With this, I now invite my colleague, Amit, to take us through all the initiatives related to technology and customer-centricity. Over to you, Amit.

Thanks, Rohit. As Rohit talked about in his presentation about how the dynamics of the market are making things quite complex with a lot of new developments happening, which means that from our technology and products and solutions perspective also, the traditional forms of our members interacting with exchange, doing the bidding, taking the bidding decisions, there we need to implement solutions so that customers are able to efficiently utilize the platform and take the most advantage of it.

This is something that we identified a few years ago, and we started working on it. With that objective, there are multiple areas of technology-focused customer-centric solutions that we started working upon.

The first was providing API-based automated bidding solutions to customers. With real-time market getting launched, there was need to provide customers the solutions so that they can directly integrate their system with our exchange platform so that in a real-time basis, they can do their bidding and take full benefit of the real-time market.

Seeing the successful adoption of this bidding solution in the real-time market, we extended this automated bidding solutions to other market segments also. We are seeing very, very good adoption of this among our customer base.

With regards to I-DAM, if you see right now, more than 70% of the cleared volume in I-DAM is contributed by members who use our bidding API solution. Now similar to bidding API, because any kind of trade that gets done eventually leads to a lot of trade reports, both on the scheduling and on the financial side for the customers, and eventually, they need to have this report data into their back office and financial applications for their subsequent processing and reporting activities.

Now there also, we identified that if we can provide our customers with API-based automated solution, which is going to enable them to do a seamless integration of their back office and financial systems with our platform, then it is really going to make the whole trading and post-trading activities very seamless and easy for our customers. With that objective, we also launched the post-trade reports and back office APIs.

Even though this is something we have launched very recently, we have already seen very, very good adoption. Right now, if we see in I-DAM, more than 50% of the cleared volume in I-DAM is by members who have already done this integration.

Unrequisitioned surplus, Rohit in his presentation talked about the LPS rules and the amendment around URS has resulted in a good volume growth in our platform, which is close to 8 billion units last year. This again we looked at as a opportunity to provide auto-bidding solutions so that it is very easy for customers to utilize the URS bidding.

We continuously look at how can we provide solutions to our customers so that they can see the value that they get from the platform. One example is from a payout perspective.

Our SLA for payout is on the next day bank clearing day post the delivery day. There, which means that if today is the delivery that has happened, and the next bank clearing day, we can have the payout processed by maybe 5:00 PM also.

We have built close integration with our clearing banks to ensure that we are doing the payout into the seller's account by 11:00 AM in the morning itself, so that then sellers have these funds available for their business operations activities, including trading, and also if people want to do some investment in overnight funds, they can do that as well. Last year, we did a processing of around more than ₹40,000 crore into sellers' account, and all within these SLA of having the payment credited to seller's account by 11:00 AM on the next clearing day of delivery.

Given that there is a lot of data that we have about customers, about their bids, we utilize this data to provide insights to customers so that they can do effective bidding decision-making. If you see, there are two kinds of data that we have.

One is the market-level data, which is a public data. As per regulatory guidelines, this data has to be public, you will find such data on our website as well about what is the cumulative bid volume, sell volume, cleared volume, clearing price across time blocks and across all other contracts.

Then there is another set of data which is the customer-specific bid data. We looked at as a opportunity that if we can provide deep insights to customers on the market-level data and as well as the individual customers' bid data, then that is something that will be really very useful for customers to do a effective bidding decision-making and get more value from the platform.

With that objective, we are currently providing multiple areas of bid data analytics and insights to the customers. We continuously engage with our customers to identify what other new areas we can provide an analytics solutions, and we keep on enhancing this.

Some of that which is mentioned over here, if you see, the cleared price insight. Clearing price insight is something which is a market-level data.

Things like uncleared buy bids and sell bids insight, it is something which is a very, very specific customer bid-level data. Similarly, DSM and RTM insights about how the DSM is there for the customers and how effectively they could have reduced by using RTM is again a very customer-specific insight.

We look at providing the market-level as well as customer-level insights to really help the customers take effective bidding decision-making. Financial reconciliation is an important operational activity for the customers, and we have built solutions to provide very easy self-service financial reconciliation to our customers, and there we have provided them multiple options through which they can do financial reconciliation in a very, very easy manner.

The entire client onboarding process is a digital. They get a complete digital experience in terms of client onboarding so that our members, trader members who want to onboard clients, it's a very, very easy and seamless process for them.

These are some of the key technology-focused, customer-centric solutions that we have built, which really helps achieve two things: one, very, very close integration and tight integrations of our system with the customer systems, and providing customers solutions that help them get more value from our platform. This is something which helps deepen our customer engagement.

In addition to looking at providing technology-centric customer solutions, it is very, very important also to continuously enhance the platform capabilities to ensure that the platform is highly secure, it's reliable, and it's resilient. Today, all of us will agree that we are living in a era where artificial intelligence is transforming all industries and all functions.

We at IEX are very, very positive about the kind of impact that AI solutions can have in providing value-added offerings to our customers as well as using AI solutions internally within our organization to become much more effective. There are a lot of areas on AI-related area that we are also working upon, and I will talk about that in my next slide.

First, if we look at, security and confidentiality of data is very, very critical, because that is what helps build trust for our members. Because if the individual members' bid details is not secured, not confidential, then it breaks the trust for the platform, and that is something which is very paramount.

We have the end-to-end encryption of the bid data for customers, both at communication and database level, so that nobody within the organization has access to any of the customers' bid data. It's completely secure, completely confidential till the time results are not computed and published.

Every data at every place is in encrypted format. In terms of ensuring that our platforms are well-secured, because today we are living in a era where cybersecurity is a very, very important aspect to focus upon, at IEX, we have implemented defense-in-depth solutions.

Multiple layers of firewall solutions, right from the web application firewall, which is at the external world level, to our network external internal firewalls, the antivirus solutions, we don't use a generic antivirus solution, essentially, we use the XDR solutions, which provide much, much more enhanced threat detection and response solutions. We have multi-factor authentication.

Within the database, we have the database monitoring tool implemented so that any kind of database updates gets recorded. We've also set up the 24/7 Security Operations Center to do a real-time monitoring of all the security-related alerts that come in, and take required actions on the alerts.

We continuously do the load testing of our platform to ensure that our platform is scalable enough to manage much higher loads than the current traffic that comes, and without any kind of performance degradation. For that, we continuously do optimization at the software, database, and at the infrastructure level.

Now as I was talking that artificial intelligence is a important focus area for us, because we feel we can use that to provide much more value-added offerings to our customers, and also for our internal operations excellence. There are a couple of AI-based solutions that we are currently working upon.

One is, we are in the process of building a AI bidding assistant for distribution companies, which can help distribution companies take much more efficient and effective bidding decisions while bidding on our platform. We're also in the process of building auto-bidder solutions for our C&I consumers, which can really help them utilize exchange to optimize their cost.

There is a AI-powered chatbot for market data that we have already developed, and in this quarter itself, we'll do the launch of this AI-powered chatbot for the entire sector. These are some of the key AI-based solutions from a customer and external-facing side.

Now within the company also, we use AI for enhancing the operations excellence within all the different areas. On the cybersecurity side, we have AI-enabled Security Operations Center for a much more predictive threat detection in a much more effective and efficient manner.

Within the software development team, we use AI-based solutions to enhance the effectiveness and productivity of our software development team. We also use AI-based solution as well as robotic process automation, the RPA-based solutions, to automate some of the key workflows and processes for us so that it enhances the productivity of the operations processes.

Here if you see, we are very active adopter of AI solutions, both for our internal working as well as for identifying solutions for our customer, and we feel that this will help us further enhance the kind of value-added offerings that we provide to our customers. Now given that we are a 24x7 exchange, and electricity is a very, very critical commodity that our customers trade in, the availability and reliability of the platform is of paramount importance.

On that, we do continuous enhancements as well as we work on building redundancy at all levels. We have redundancy built in at application, database, server, connectivity, to ensure that we are able to achieve very, very high reliability.

Given that we are noticing that real-time market is one of the fastest-growing segment for us, contributing almost close to now the day-ahead volumes, what we have also done, given that real-time market, the bidding timelines are so tight, just 15 minutes in every 30 minutes interval, the new paper that has come, it talks about squeezing the bidding time from 15 minutes to now 5 minutes, we have also built a hot standby solution for real-time market which is something that would ensure that we are able to have a much, much more high availability and reliable solutions, that even if in a 5-minute bidding scenario, even if there is a technical outage in one of the channels, the other channel will be able to provide the availability to our customers in a real-time basis. We have also implemented a very, very seamless and fast switch from our DC site to DR site.

Just in case if there is any physical outage or any kind of outage which makes our DC unavailable for access by our customers for running the exchange operations, we can, in a very, very seamless and fast manner, do the switch from DC to DR. This is something which helps provide a very, very robust business continuity.

All the efforts that we take in around cybersecurity, around building availability and resilience, and working on the artificial intelligence solutions, these are again something which helps customers get the trust of our platform, and they know that this is a platform where their data is going to remain confidential, this is a platform which is a very, very secured platform, and this is a platform which is a reliable platform. These initiatives, coupled with the customer-centric solutions that I talked in the beginning of the presentation, they really help build the trust that customers have on our platform, and it helps us deepen the engagement.

With that, I will invite our CFO and Company Secretary, Vineet Harlalka, to come and talk about IGX and upcoming coal exchange, and the financial numbers of our company. Thank you.

Thanks, Amit. I think Rohit and Amit covered the business side and the technical side.

Now we look at how the overall value proposition what the IEX team is doing for the stakeholders. As Mr.

Goel and Rohit in their presentations and the inaugural note had stated that we incorporate the IGX in 2019 and started the giving the value. Then ICX is there now.

Coal exchange we incorporated in the month of June, and hopefully, soon we will be launching the company for the mineral exchange also. If you look at how the IGX has grown over the period in the last 5-6 years, it's a very new concept when it was started in 2019, and it reached with the CAGR growth of volume of 76.8 million MMBtu, and had the profit of ₹42 crore.

All the entities which are dealing in the gas in India or abroad are mainly all are at the platform. The good part is that they had filed the DRHP in this month, and hopefully getting listed soon.

Then the coal exchange we had already discussed, the government come out with the notifications of the rule on the 4th of June. As initially Mr.

Goel had stated, the good part is that now no e-auction platform will be allowed beyond 6 months from the launching of the coal exchanges, including the platform of the Coal India. All the trading in the coal will be coming to the coal exchange, which give the initial target of at least 100 million ton of the unit we were expecting at the exchange platform in the initial year.

Soon on the 15th of July also, they come out with the application process where the coal exchanges can apply for the registration and licensing. This is the value proposition when we look for the coal exchange.

We're expecting the demand for the coal to increase significantly from 1,200 presently to around 2,000 million ton by 2035, and increasingly we're expecting a increase in the captive and commercial coal production to around 500 million tons by 2035. Considering the overall these triggers, the spot market volume can go to almost 250 million ton by 2035.

The main drivers will be the increase in demand, the overall captive mines generations, all the production that will be there, and then secondly, few to many, because right now not too many people are there. When the captive mines come and production come, many-to-many trades will be there, which will bring liquidity and a lot of flexibility for the buyers to trade in the coal.

IEX, with the rich experience of the spot exchanges and with our reach with the power, cement, and the lot of heavy industries which uses the coal, we are hopeful that we will be more pioneer in developing the exchange and their regulated products which can be give the desired result for the market needs. Overall, when we look at that, we are mindful of our social responsibilities also.

Just to update our stakeholders and the investors that we take care of our business also, and we fulfill our social responsibilities also. Last year, we had taken a lot of initiatives, new initiatives also, to see how we can give back to the society.

This is the summary of the few of the activities we had taken. One was that where we supported the blind kids for their education, giving them the AI-enabled and the tech-enabled solutions for their vision impairment through which they can help them in their education and day-to-day life.

We do a lot of support whatever we can manage regarding the floods into the Punjab and Uttarakhand. We also support the heritage site of the Purana Qila and the Safdarjung for the development, and whatever the tourist-related activities we can do to promote the heritages in India.

Ultimately, this is the value proposition of the IEX when we look at the last 4 year. Despite all the challenges, we had been able to perform with all the support of our stakeholders, our customers, and the regulators.

We achieved the 15% CAGR growth on the operating revenue, and there was 11% growth on this quarter in comparison to previous quarter. Total revenue was somewhere around ₹745 crore we achieved during the previous year, and this quarter, we achieved almost around ₹201 crore.

The expenses are more or less in line with 13%, mainly increase on the tech side. We are spending heavily on the tech side.

We achieved almost around ₹135 crore consolidated profit during this quarter, which is almost 12% increase over the previous year. This is the overall value proposition.

The net worth of the company is around ₹1,400 crore, and the EPS for the last year was ₹5.33, and ROE we are maintaining around 42% to 44% ROE continuously over the last 4-5 years. As a policy, we are paying almost around more than 50%, 65% range of percentage as a dividend over the last many years.

This is the overall summary. We achieved the ₹493 crore of the consolidated profit during the previous year, which is 17.2% CAGR.

IEX standalone was around ₹474 crore, IGX ₹42 crore, and ICX, though it's a small beginning, but we hope it will also bring opportunity in the future. Overall, we are looking at the trend, and continue to give the good reward.

This is the overall from the financial side. Now I request Mr.

Rohit if you can come and summarize all the presentations. Rohit, over to you.

Before we break for Q&A, let me try and summarize what we have discussed in last 1 1.5 hour. Growth is broad-based.

We are banking on demand boom in the country. Electrification is happening, data center, EV, air conditionings are going to drive the demand.

If it is going to be 1.5x by 20 2032, we will have our play here. There is a massive headroom available for penetration for exchanges.

In India, as I mentioned, it is just 8%, 9% now, but globally, if you see, our model is very similar to European model where voluntary exchanges are there, and they are doing 50-60% of their total consumption routed through exchanges. Huge headroom is available for us to grow, and all the developments, new market model that we have discussed, will play their role.

It would not be only the central marketplace that we are discussing today, there would be multi-layered volume markets which will be created over time. The work has already started in that direction, and that will also give us good headroom to grow.

Business model is strong. We have deep relationship of 18 years with our customers.

Everybody is with us, registered with us. API-led integration that we have done in last 2 years is coming out very promising.

This has been appreciated by all our clients as well as members. Today, they are integrated with us, both from front-end side and also at the back end.

This is a asset-light, high-margin platform business. We have a strong cash flows, which will help us grow, which will help us diversify, moving into inorganic territories.

On the organic side, expansion is limited towards volume growth and new products, some of the things we discussed. BESS price arbitrage is a huge opportunity.

It stands out, apart from other thing, because other things have been there for quite some time. Something like BESS arbitrage, something like capacity market, CFDs, ancillary, carbon markets are something which stands out, where we are super bullish.

Then the inorganic thing, where government focus is on the platform, what we have seen last 2 years, coal exchange has become reality, mineral exchange has also become reality, we will have our play there. Then gas, coal, ICX, the existing entities, group entities, performing well, there is a lot to grow.

Strategically, they are well placed. Then finally, the BESS opportunity, which also we are considering for us to have some play there as well.

With this, we conclude our presentations, and Aparna, we can make arrangement for Q&A now. Thank you so much.

Thank you, IEX management, for the detailed presentations. We are just setting up the stage for the Q&A round.

May I please request everyone to keep your questions limited to two per person so that others also get an opportunity to ask questions.

Good evening, friends. I think the most important part of the session, question-answer, is now open, and we will try to address your concerns and queries.

Hi, Goel ji, this is Paresh Singhani here. Congratulations to you and your team for having built a wonderful company over the last 18 years at the foremost, and second, also thank you for the detailed presentation that you guys have taken today.

I have one question and just two request, trying to meet Aparna's requirement over here. The first question is largely in terms of what do you expect RTM to be over next 3 years?

Because from the current 35% to 40%, where do you think this is going to settle? Because the growth has been really spectacular.

Which is the other star product that you think could be the next RTM, to speak, within our scheme of overall things, whether it's peak contracts or whether it's green RTM, for instance? The other two request I have is one is a need for doing a buyback, given the valuations are all-time low.

Second question is once we come up with this IGX IPO, a request if IEX shareholders can be given a proportionate, what do I call, a reservation for applying for the IGX shares while the listing happens, if there's such a possibility?

The first question was on RTM.

The share of RTM itself over 3 to 5 years. I think

when we started RTM in 2020, we never expected that the RTM volumes will increase so fast. RTM is growing at a rate of almost about 30-35% on CAGR basis.

In fact, with high renewable capacity addition in the country, the RTM growth is going to continue. I believe that RTM volume will be in fact higher than the day-ahead market volume in time to come, because RTM is one market where everybody is participating.

Distribution companies, if they have surplus power, on real-time basis, they are able to assess that, yes, maybe in the next 1 hour, we don't need so much of power, and I can sell the power, they sell that power. Distribution companies are buying the power also.

C&I consumers are doing it. Even the generators, if there is a unit outage, they make good that commitment by purchasing power from the exchange in the RTM market.

I think RTM volumes in this energy transition taking place is definitely going to increase. It would be difficult to give you the number, but my gut feeling is that it will definitely grow at a rate of 25% to 30% in the time to come.

Any other product which can be the next RTM? I think this BESS can be another product which can really be a new game-changer, because earlier, renewable, people were talking about for the purpose of green energy, clean energy.

Now renewable has become more competitive than the coal-based thermal energy. Everybody is now going for the renewable because it is very, very cost-competitive.

Today, with solar, wind, pump storage, battery storage, it will be possible to have round-the-clock renewable energy at a very competitive rate. I think this is going to provide another big opportunity for us.

Your point regarding IGX, I don't think it is really possible to have that kind of reservation for the IEX shareholders in the IGX IPO. IGX IPO is independent IPO.

Buyback, yes, definitely, we will consider in future, because now SEBI also has revised their rules for doing the buyback through the market, we will definitely consider that part of it.

Thank you, sir.

Hi. How do you think about IEX role with India Energy Stack and P2P?

In that discussion, where does IEX plays a role? Are you part of those discussions of the Energy Stack market?

Yeah. We are definitely part of that.

We represent power market there as a as a expert, and participating in all the developments which are happening. We see there is a great In fact, let's let's quickly see what they are trying to do.

Today, in the sector, data flow is is a problem. In fact, if you see last 2-3 years developments, we have gone back.

Whatever being published 3 years back is not available now, many of the NLDC and other reports which used to be there. One of the key element that I India Energy Stack is trying to do is, they want to streamline data flow, they want to make it seamlessly available at one platform, which is IES.

You would agree with me, power exchange-related data is already there, every bit of it. Now that is first step where we have seen that it is there, it can be easily integrated.

Now we have to take it beyond it, and all other transactions which are happening, whether it is through DEEP or whether it is long term, any anything and everything should get captured there. That's one part of it, but the end objective here is the whole idea is to make it platform where transactions can be enabled.

When in the AI Week sometime back, few months few months back, there was one pilot which was done for peer-to-peer trading. There was one guy sitting in small guy sitting in retail-level person sitting in one state, they supplied energy to other state, and that transaction happened through peer-to-peer model.

What we are seeing here is, in this entire thing, there would be multi-layered market which will clear which will be created, multi-layered market which will be created. It may not be immediately at peer-to-peer level, prosumer level, but definitely, there is great scope to create markets at intra-state level where there are certain states where you have concentration of generation also and demand also, those things will come up first.

We are closely working with them, monitoring the situation, and as and when we feel there are enablers in place, we would be first mover to create such marketplaces. This is currently what we are looking at it.

My second question is, how big do you think the coal trading market could become? How much the MSTC and other platforms charges now on their platform?

When we expect to start the exchange? The last bit is, is the shareholding requirement is similar to the IEX or the gas exchanges?

Thank you. That's it.

Can you repeat your question?

Be a little loud, please.

Yeah.

My question was, how big is the coal trading market do you think it can become? How much the MSTC and other platform are charging currently,

right?

When we expect to start the exchange? Last bit is, is the shareholding requirements similar to the electricity market and the gas market?

Yeah. That's it.

Yeah.

We explained about the market size. As per the rules, all coal e-auction platforms and marketplace will not exist after the coal exchange start operation.

Within 6 months of coal exchange operation, they will have to do all the transactions through the coal exchange only. Today, volume transacted through the e-auction and the marketplace is almost about 120 million ton.

Coal India alone did e-auction of about 90 million ton of coal. The market size as on date is 120 million ton, and it can increase to almost about 250-300 million ton by 2035.

That's the kind of market which we expect it to be. Now MSTC and mjunction, they are doing e-auction, and after the coal exchange starts operation, they will not be able to do the e-auction, that's as per the rule of the game just been notified by Ministry of Coal.

The kind of transaction fees they're charging, they are basically only discovering the price for doing the e-auction platform. They have a fixed fee for each of the auction which they charge.

As far as exchanges are concerned, exchanges will be doing the price discovery, and at the same time, will be doing physical and financial settlement. Clearing and settlement also will be done by the exchanges.

Exchanges will be counterparty on both side. I think exchanges will be provide much more value, I think the fees in case of exchanges will be definitely higher than what MSTC and mjunction are charging.

Shareholding pattern for the coal exchanges, yes, it is similar to what has been notified for the power exchange and the gas exchange. Nobody can hold more than 25%, no trading member can hold more than 5%, it's that similar kind of shareholding pattern.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for the detailed presentation.

First question was on the RTM market. When we look at global volumes, most of it lies in the day-ahead market, but when we are seeing RTM volumes growing in India, it's almost as big as day-ahead, and it might grow bigger.

Can you help us understand what is structurally different in the India market due to which RTM has grown so big? That's the first question.

Actually, in India, we have 25 years long-term PPAs for meeting the demand of distribution companies. That was the trend, and that is still continuing.

Almost about 85% of the demand of distribution companies is met through the long-term PPAs. In fact, in future also, banks are willing to do the lending only if there are PPAs, we expect long-term PPAs will continue in future also.

In case of European countries where the exchange transactions are high, they don't have long-term PPAs of 25 years. They have PPAs maybe for shorter duration, and they do the re-trading also.

The DAM market is basically main market in those countries. In India, DAM market is basically for distribution companies to meet their whatever shortfall in meeting the demand on seasonal basis or on daily basis or hourly basis, that is coming in the day-ahead market.

Real-time market is basically because of large variability in the renewable generation. Same state, we have seen selling power on a particular day, and next day, he's buying power.

Because on day one, the wind generation was very high, they were having surplus power and they were selling, and within a day, the wind was low and the generation was low, they were shortage of power. I think these kind of transactions happen through the RTM market.

That is why the RTM market will keep growing.

Sure, thank you. The other question, we know there's uncertainty around it currently, but if Grid India was to become the market coupling operator, there would be some cost associated with them running these operations.

Can you help us understand your idea of who's going to bear this cost of MCO?

There is nothing free. All costs are passed on to the consumer, directly or indirectly.

Hi, sir. First question was on RTM versus DAM.

You spoke about two things. One, the genesis of exchange was to help them plan ahead.

If there's some shortcoming or there's excess demand or there's shortfall in their electricity. With DAM, you had a window of 1 day to plan, whereas when it comes to RTM, yeah, you're doing the last-minute planning, right?

How does a customer of yours, which is the discom, kind of do planning by relying on RTM? Because how does RTM in a way replaces DAM for him?

That was the first question.

See, when we started exchange in 2008, we had only DAM market, because at that time, there was no renewable. It was basically thermal generation, you can do forecast about the availability of generation, you can do a fair estimation of your demand, and so you can do all these things through the day-ahead market.

As renewable started increasing from 2015, '16, '17, solar prices came down to almost about ₹2.5 in 2017, '18, solar capacity started happening, then market started feeling that there is a lot of variation in this generation capacities, and distribution companies who have signed PPAs for this, they're also seeing a lot of variation in availability of power with them. That is when the need for the real-time market was felt, and in 2020, the real-time market started.

You can see the participation in the real-time market, the kind of volume increase which is happening, it is basically because to meet this variability in the renewable generation. That is going to continue, and I'm pretty sure that real-time market volume will keep on increasing.

Because what I remember from our launch was it was for DSM, right, the 10-12% volume deviation settlement mechanism, and it became so big. The follow-up question on that is, you said in European markets, DAM is a very large market because long-term PPAs are not as big part of the power market as they are in India.

The question then is, if RTM is going to become big because of this variability, the expansion of the short-term market or the exchanges in the overall will always be limited in India? What is your view on that?

Because when we think about exchanges growth, there were two levers. One was gaining share in the short-term market, which we have done very well from 37% in 2019 to 60% plus now, whereas as you were mentioning, the share of short term or the exchanges in overall power generation or consumption is still low.

Because of this nature where PPAs will remain the dominant structure, does it mean that our share, exchanges' share in overall consumption will always be say 10-12% at max?

See, since in India we are going to have long-term contracts, definitely, in India, the exchange volume is not going to be as high as what it is in the European countries where almost about 50-60% of the generation is routed through the exchange. We did some estimation on this, and what we feel is that almost about 25% of the total generation, that is the opportunity size, maybe in the next 5-6 years, it can be that kind of a opportunity.

Because bilateral transactions, trading transactions through the trading companies, banking transactions, if you see, all these things are shrinking, and exchange volumes are increasing. The short-term market, which is almost about 14-15%, major part of it is on the exchange platform.

In future, we feel that the 25% is something which is possible.

Fair. Sorry if I can squeeze in one more last question.

We've talked about so many new products that we are in the pipeline to be launched, and all these approvals will be given by CERC, who's our regulator. Just a common sense question, because we have taken them to the court because of the regulations on market coupling, does it in any way impact their not giving us approval or delaying our approvals for these products?

Because our position as an exchange becomes more stronger with these products coming through.

One correction. We have not taken CERC to court.

There is a legal provision available that if we are aggrieved by any order of the CERC, we can go against that order. It does not mean that we are taking CERC to court.

These are legal provisions which are available. After all, we also have shareholders.

Whatever legal recourse is available, we are basically using that part of it. I don't think CERC understands this very well.

NTPC, company like NTPC, Power Grid, NHPC, which are the government companies, they also have gone to the APTEL and Supreme Court against the CERC orders whenever they're aggrieved. Going to the court is nothing against any individual.

It is against that particular order. Regulator is mature, I must say that.

They understand all these things. I don't think that this will come in the way of approval of new products, because regulator themselves are interested in developing the market.

So May I add just one point here. See, these products are of national importance.

Today, government is dealing with, in fact, what we have seen in recent past, there was acute crunch of power. Evening power was not there anywhere.

On exchanges, there was 30,000-40,000 requirement, bids were there, power available was less than 5,000 MW. If peak power products are required, it is required for larger cause.

It is not that we are doing it for our gain or somebody else' gain. Government is aligned, regulator is aligned, and some of these things have been discussed with them, and after alignment only, we file those petitions.

Unfortunately, it is taking a little more time. There are some procedural hurdles which are there, and we are sure that in times to come, it will be released.

Hi, sir. Thank you, firstly, for giving an opportunity and for a detailed presentation.

One thing that I saw in your presentation is on market coupling, you said that the Grid India has a lot of apprehension about this itself. Firstly, what is your real assessment in terms of by when can we see the final regulations, on market coupling?

Secondly, if this comes at all, what would be the timeline for the implementation of market coupling? See,

implementing market coupling is a major change in the exchange market design. I think such matters are dealt very cautiously.

You can see even the market coupling started in 2023, and it is going on, because regulator also wants to examine each and every aspect of it. Similarly, while implementing it also, a care has to be taken that nothing wrong happens in the market.

Today, they know one thing that from the last 18 years, this market is operating reliably. They will have to examine each and every aspect of it, how is the software done, what is the logic behind this software, what should be the logic for the new market coupling system, what is the kind of reliability which is required in the hardware system, software system, security system, inter-exchange settlements.

There are a lot of things which are to be done. Then after doing all that, I think there will be regulatory approvals and then the mock drill to see that nothing goes wrong.

These things are going to take time. It would be difficult for me to give any timeline on this.

I can only tell you one thing, that sometime in 1994, '95, when availability-based tariff was discussed in the country, it started sometime in 2000 1994, '95, and it was finally implemented in 2003. It took so much of time.

This may not take that long, but then definitely, it will take long time.

This concerns raised by Grid India, can that also defer the finalization of regulation itself?

I don't think I'm competent to answer on that.

Sir. Secondly, sir, I think the API strategy that you have kind of run over the last 2 years to ensure more stickiness within your client base, once if hypothetically we move to a market coupling system where MCO will have their own technology, are these APIs would be helping us to kind of integrate with the MCO technology as well?

Secondly, if that actually happens, can that lead to a kind of a more competitive pricing between the exchanges? Because if that is the only way they can gain market share, can we move towards that, what we saw in the TAM segment?

The MCO arrangement is only for price discovery and not for bidding. Bidding, the market participant will need to continue to do on respective exchange.

As you rightly mentioned, given that through APIs we have done tighter integration with the customers and directly with their systems, both for the bidding and the post-trade activities, definitely, that is something that would be useful for customers, because the API-based solutions is providing automated and a seamless and a very, very easy bidding and post-bidding activities to our customers. Now MCO's role is to combine all the bid from the exchanges, and not from the customers.

Individual customers will place bids, exchanges will send the bids to the MCO, and the MCO will collate all the bids to do the price discovery. There's no bidding-related integration required for the customers with the MCO.

Now for sending the bids to MCO, of course, Grid India will publish the APIs, which all three exchanges will have to integrate to send the combined bids of their platform. From the customer side, the work that we have done in driving API integration, that competitive advantage remains with us.

Sir, my query is related to the market coupling and market coupling operator.

Can you please a little louder, please?

Yeah. In case of market coupling operator, right, my query is that since as you said right, there the fees will be charged to some participant.

My query is as to who will they be charged to? Will it to be to the exchange or will it to be the end customer?

Will that in the way force you to reduce your fees? Because price discovery has moved to the MCO, and you are collecting bids.

Just wanted your thoughts on that.

I think these are issues which have flagged by the Grid India also in their comments to CERC. In addition to the point raised by you, there are many more issues which needs to be answered.

I think these things will be answered maybe in the final regulations or in the procedure or subsequently by CERC by their various orders. That is why I said that implementation, it will take longer time, because all these issues one by one will have to be addressed.

Today, we do not know what are the things to be addressed. As we go along this implementation path, there will be many more issues which will need to be addressed.

Sir, my second question is as you said right, DAM is possibly the market which they are targeting first to be coupled, right? In terms of your planning as to what is the possible market share loss that you're looking in case a DAM market is coupled in the next let's say 1 or 2 years?

How are you planning for it?

With the kind of service which we have provided in the last 18 years, the kind of customer connect what we have today, I don't see any loss in the market share after the coupling. Let's see.

This is a market who will have to decide about it. Today, you have NSE and BSE, and in spite of that, NSE is able to retain the market share.

I think time only will decide that. With the kind of values if we continue to provide that, we should be able to maintain reasonably good market share.

Hello, sir. Thank you for hosting us today.

My question is related to the clearing and settlement function of the exchange. If I understand it correctly, according to the Payment and Settlement Act, the exchange function and the settlement and clearing function cannot be under the same entity, for which power exchanges were provided some exemption, which expired last year.

Will there be a need to separate the clearing and settlement function of the power exchanging to a separate entity, and will it continue to be owned 100% by IEX or will there be a need to divest some portion of it to other investors?

There is nothing regarding the separation of the clearing and settlement function. The Power Market Regulation say the clearing and settlement function of the exchange have to be as per the PSS Act.

We had been taking up the matter, even the CERC has taken up the matter. It's more of a process for the registration of the exchange clearing function with the PSS Act.

There is no question of any separation, because this narrative is coming where the SEBI requires the separation of the clearing and settlement function where the stock exchanges have. Here, the Power Market Regulation just say one thing, that you have to comply with the PSS regulation for a clearing function.

PSS Act is totally silent on that, that there have to be separate It's talk about the registration, that the entities which are the part of the clearing and settlement process which is doing and need to be registered, they need to register. That's all.

We are exploring, we are working with the regulator RBI, and we are in discussion with the few experts also to see how to ensure that this issue is resolved.

There will be no financial impact?

I don't see, because the registration is more of just a procedural process. If anything RBI want on the procedural side, it is more there.

We don't see any financial impact of that. It's more of a procedure and compliance part, nothing more than that.

I think it is basically a process part of it. Whatever we are doing today, that is in line with what is required under the PSS Act.

Only thing is, we are doing under our rules, which are approved by CERC. Tomorrow, we may have to have this authorization from RBI.

It won't involve any additional financial implications on this.

Second question is about renewable energy certificates. RECs and International RECs, I believe these are two separate products.

If you can talk about the market side, the volume expectations, and how big this opportunity can become?

I-REC is the market that is operated right now in 60-plus countries by I-REC Foundation. REC, if you see, it's a compliance mechanism, which is a domestic certificate compliance mechanism of our country.

I-RECs is a international renewable energy certificate mechanism. There, our role, right now, I-REC Foundation has appointed our subsidiary company, ICX, as the sole local issuer of I-RECs in India.

As with regards to that, we do two activities. Any new facilities that get registered on the I-REC standards, that whole registration, review, and approval process gets done by our company.

Post the registration, based upon the renewable generation that that entity is doing, the issuance of certificates that can then be traded in the I-REC market is something again which gets done by our subsidiary company, ICX. With regards to the growth in the I-REC, as Rohit mentioned in his slide, definitely, there are growth drivers that we are seeing, and especially with the time series granularity being one of the important component on which I-REC standards is already working upon.

I-REC registries is managed by Evident, which is now a Expansive company. They have already started work on providing a hourly-based matching for I-RECs.

In the near future, we'll have hourly-based timestamping available for I-RECs. Also in India, in some of the international market, they have already started doing the pilots.

Those are going to drive the demands through RE100 claims, GHG Scope 2 claims, and also SBTI. SBTI right now doesn't recognize I-REC as one of the acceptable standards, but what they are saying that with hourly timestamping coming, they are also going to recognize I-REC as one of the standards for SBTI claims as well.

Definitely, those are some of the important drivers that will drive the growth of the I-REC market.

Thank you.

Sumit Kishore from Axis Capital. Thank you for the extremely informative presentations over the last couple of hours.

My question is in relation to the IEX demand profile chart that Rohit had spoken about. Sell bids during daytime far exceed the buy bids, and scheduled volumes seem to be almost 30,000 MW plus below which is on offer in the sell bids.

What happens to the part that is not cleared, assuming bulk of it is solar, I'm assuming, during daytime? The second part to this question is there is curtailment of solar due to transmission evacuation.

How much of the curtailment is also happening because thermal power projects are running below technical minimum, between say 12:00 to 1:00 PM and so on? What is the opportunity there for IEX?

That's my first question.

We have not reached a stage where because of non-clearance during the daytime, solar is being curtailed. Today, as I have shared the slide, on an average, 10,000-12,000 MW is getting cleared during the daytime, and out of that, the solar component is quite small, it is only probably 2,000-3,000 MW.

What is being curtailed is actually thermal power, which is coming either directly through IPPs who are bidding or coming indirectly through the bids of distribution companies. As of now, there is a long, long way to go when solar not getting thing will get curtailed.

When that happen, then you will see consistently zero price on the market, right? There is some power which is available which is at zero.

Let's say I am renewable generator, I will quote as low as possible, because uniform clearing price, whatever is the discovered price, I'll get that. I don't mind getting 50 paise also.

It is better than getting curtailed. Solar guys are quoting close to zero.

Then every thermal generator is quoting basis their variable cost, energy charge. As I said, we are not reached that state, it is still quite far away.

For the high variable cost thermal power projects, which are likely to be operating below technical minimum, would they have a choice to actually go meaningfully below technical minimum or they be curtailed?

That is what is happening today. Let's say there is a state, and state has got multiple portfolios.

What I'll do is, I'll see my demand, and then map it with the total supply that is available, and on collective basis, I will figure out that there is 5,000 MW additional power available, and put that in the market. Now at the time of bidding at the market, what I'll see, I will also see portfolio-wise variable cost, right?

Now there are plants which are a little costlier, there are plants which are little cheaper as compared to them. Clearance would be dependent on what prices I have quoted.

What is uncleared, that 100%, more than 100% of that is completely thermal power. When we see zero price, this is the time when thermal generators try to compete with solar power, because whenever there is a zero price, that time you will see the clearance is quite high, because many states are optimizing it.

That time you will find clearance is more than 10,000, even on the holidays, even on the 1st May, May Day sort of a day. Then what happens is, these cheaper thermal plants, they start to compete.

Now they need technical minimum, they are willing to go below their variable cost, they are coming to zero. There are very few instances whenever we are touching zero, then there is some thermal power plant, they are not able to recover their energy charge, they are coming below technical minimum.

Otherwise, majority of the time, they stick to their energy charge, which is the variable cost.

Got it. Sir, you also mentioned that regarding the opportunity around BESS, what will be the longevity of the time-shift arbitrage, which has become very attractive right now in the market for BESS?

How much BESS is required theoretically to make the arbitrage less attractive? When you say two-cycle operation, theoretically, is it possible to do two cycles, because the second cycle, how do you manage with solar and would it theoretically be just 1.2, 1.3 cycles?

See,

two cycles is very much possible as long as you're getting required arbitrage from the market. Because when we are saying 550 520 days two cycle is possible, these are the time when you're getting one dip and one high point, right?

Nighttime suppose there is a low price, then there is a morning where you can discharge. Again, you can charge during the daytime when the prices are low, again you can discharge when the nighttime is there.

This possibility is not available throughout the year, there are 100 150-odd days when it is available, majorly during the winter time. Your second question is, how long this will exist, arbitrage?

Now this is a million-dollar question. No ready answer with anybody, because there are many models which people are operating and trying to figure out, they're trying to forecast the price going forward, what sort of capacity addition would be there, what sort of supply will come, and if that supply will come, solar is going to play important role, what sort of solar addition is going to be there.

ALMM 1 has impacted solar, 2 is going to impact solar. All these things are to be factored in to decide on what sort of opportunity time exists.

One thing people are believing, and we also believe the same, seeing the trend today, and I will quote one more example. See, November normally is a month in India where demand overall is very low.

In the month of November also, evening time, we touch ₹10. Why?

Because solar when it starts to come down, thermal has to be ramped up, and then there is a window of 1 to 2 hour where, because of down and up, there is a small window is created when it goes up to ₹10. The ₹10 is not a function of shortage.

₹10 is a function of mismatch. It's a issue of integration of renewable rather than anything else.

Now one argument is, as more little bit BESS will come, the evening gap will get squeezed, the daytime these guys will be buying, daytime availability will go down, evening availability will go up, and the arbitrage won't exist. The other set of argument is the kind of solar capacity that we have created in the country and the cell capacity that is coming now, all these things being in place and the rate at which is available, solar is definitely going to come.

Solar addition is going to be much more than BESS addition, and this is all our understanding, nothing right or wrong about it, I'm just sharing my perspective. Solar addition is definitely going to be more than BESS addition, because on BESS, we are still dependent on imports, we are not doing it, and BESS no way is close to solar costing-wise.

Solar definitely is going to go up, which means there would be more supply which would be there, and we have seen in last 3 years, daytime tariff from 4 has come down to 3 last year, to 2 this year, probably it will go to 1.5 this particular year, which means daytime there is a huge pressure. Evening, there is a ramping requirement, there is additional demand, traditionally we see evening demand is always there.

We feel that another few years, 3, 4, 5 years, this opportunity should be there.

In addition to this, our demand is also increasing at a rate of almost about 6% in the country. This additional demand also will keep on providing you arbitrage for some more time.

I think you can do a reasonably good forecasting for 4-5 years. About that, yes, we are reasonably sure, but in future also, I'm sure it will be there.

Hi. Anuj Sharma from Steadview.

Just wanted to understand your thoughts on evolution of the open access, and can it become a reasonable category in the next few years?

Open access, it all depends on the state government, state regulators, and distribution companies. Government of India is definitely looking to promote this because they want industries more competitive.

In fact, in the draft bill also, they have said that the open access charges should be progressively reduced, and particularly for the manufacturing industries, metros, and railways. Let us see how fast it is implemented by the state governments and state regulators.

Okay.

My second question is on the spot coal exchange. How many players would be bidding for this particular exchange, and just a little bit more beyond our competencies on this spot exchange, what more do we bring on the table for the coal exchange?

See,

we have definitely incorporated Indian Coal Exchange. For others, it is too early to say anything about that, but maybe in due course of time when they apply for the license, market will come to know about that.

Our expertise, okay, we're the only one, is it, right now?

We had no expertise when we started the power exchange. We had no expertise when we started the gas exchange.

Don't worry about that. Aap jab samudra mein koodenge to tairna seekh jayenge.

Yahan bhi hum kar lenge. We have at least 18 years of experience of running a spot market.

One quick one on the Supreme Court petition. What exact relief are we seeking now?

Thanks.

See, the relief we are seeking is that CERC order is bad in law. Let's see what we get.

Hi. Good evening, sir.

Thank you for the detailed presentation. A couple of questions.

It's been quite some time now the long-duration product under term-ahead market has been delayed. The Supreme Court case between SEBI and CERC got over in '24, 2024.

What are the roadblocks out there? When do we see this come online?

That's one. The second one was on carbon trading.

Apart from time of day being a growth driver for new facilities to register under that, any other growth drivers or incentives out there for developers to register under the I-REC and not under the domestic STPR regulation?

Your first question was?

The long-duration contract up to 11 months.

Long-duration contract approval, I think there are many issues which the regulatory commission will have to consider before approving a contract. They are also looking at the performance of the existing 3 months contracts, looking at the market dynamics.

In fact, if you look at transactions in the contracts which are beyond 3 months, those are not significant, and they will have to also standardize those contracts. They are working on all that, and there are many more issues on which regulator is working, it is difficult to say when this approval will come.

Sir,

it's been 2 years now since we have applied, if I'm not mistaken.

Pardon?

It's been more than 2 years since we have applied for that approval.

We applied. Yes, you are right, we applied about 2 years back.

On the carbon trading, how big is the market in your assessment?

One of the question that you had, if I understood correctly, was that what are the advantages that drive the growth of I-REC when REC is already there. If you see that I-REC standards are currently acceptable for RE100 claims, GHG 2 claims, and now very soon, it will be for SBTI claims also.

That is where buyers, they feel that, okay, if they have to take those claims' advantage, they go for I-RECs. The international players who want to showcase their compliance with their RE100 goals, they again prefer I-RECs.

Rohit in his presentation talked about VPPAs, and large technology company like Google, they are one of the big players in the VPPA market. In India, if you see, Google has a VPPA contract with CleanMax, and there again, they take the I-RECs out of that contract and then utilize it.

That is where the I-REC thing differentiates itself. It's a kind of international standards, and that is where the demand for the whole I-REC keeps on coming.

Great.

Friends, can I suggest one thing? I think maybe the time is almost about 7:50, and can we have last two persons?

I'm not saying two questions, let's have two persons.

Hi, sir. This is Ishan from Antique.

One question, just wanted to understand why are REC volumes down 80% YoY and QoQ? Is it shifting to I-REC?

No,

REC volumes are down, number one is that it is just first quarter of the year, too early to make any comment on that. Second is there is a draft which is under circulation that if you are not able to meet your RPO obligation by end of the year, then you can make good that by doing the buyout.

That means you can make payment to the statutory authority to meet that RPO obligation. I think there is some, at the moment, confusion in the market, and when there is more clarity on this, REC volumes should pick up.

Okay. Secondly, sir, on realization, if we take total volumes and divided with the revenue on standalone basis, the realization comes at around 4 paise per unit, whereas last quarter and year Q1 FY 2026, it was around 3.7 paise.

How should we look at it? Is it the right way to look at it or?

You

see, I think there are few markets like in RECs and the term-ahead market, we give some incentives. Because term-ahead contracts are for longer duration, some incentives are given in that.

It is because of that. I think the last question is there is a lady here, she has been looking for it.

I'll

take the question from her. Hi.

Good evening.

This is Mona from Club Millionaire. Firstly, I wanted to know what is the contribution of the top 5 to 10 clients in your overall volumes, and how has it been trending over the last few years?

Top 10 buyers, I think their volume contribution is almost about 50-60%, and top 10 sellers is I think the concentration is less on the sell side, it could be about 40%. We have everyday almost about 800-900 participants who participate in this market.

Just one more thing, these buyers and sellers are not same. One season there are new set of buyers, other season those are not there at all.

This 50-60% versus 40% has sort of remained the same over the last few years?

Can't say that it has remained same, but it is in that range, yes. There was a time when on the buy side, the concentration was higher, but now that concentration is reducing.

Right.

Thank you, friends, and we are available now. The dinner and the bar is open, I'm available, my all colleagues are available, we can take more questions during the discussion time.

Thank you very much for coming and attending this Analysts Meet.