The Next Leaps of India's Energy Transition| ft. Gauri Singh

Welcome to the India Energy Hour, where we explore the biggest questions shaping energy transitions, climate action and sustainable development in India and beyond. Your hosts for this episode are Shreya Jay, Energy Writer and Policy and List and Dr. Sandeep Pai, Energy Transition Researcher and author. The show is produced by one-one reporters, a pan-Indian network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. If you enjoy listening to the India Energy Hour, please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts. Over the past decade, India has emerged as one of the world's leading renewable energy markets. Clear policy direction, competitive markets and strong public and private investments have helped drive this transformation. But as the energy transition enters its next phase, new challenges are emerging. In great modernization and energy storage to affordable finance and regional cooperation. In this episode, we are joined by Gauri Singh, Deputy Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency and one of the key architects of India's flagship national solar mission. With over three decades of experience in renewable energy policy and international cooperation, she shares insights from India's clean energy journey and discusses what lies ahead for India and the global South. Hello and welcome to the India Energy Armacing. We have been planning to get you for some time now. I think this plan has been working for years. But thank you again for joining us here. Your part of our century is a special. We have just crossed a hundred episodes. So happy to have you here and looking forward to learning from your fascinating journey in the green energy sector. So thank you so much for having me on this podcast. It's always a pleasure to talk to specialized podcasts that really are working around the sector, the energy sector. And I think with India as such a growing, fast growing sector, I think there are developments that happen very frequently so it's always good to be able to speak about it and do some thinking around what next. Absolutely, and we are looking forward to capture both the developments and what future holds. I'll start with you, you are definitely a very well-known person, but our audience would love to know a bit about your journey. You spend three decades now, it's not more working across the renewable energy sector. In India, you are part of the first, you're the founding member team which was responsible behind the national solar mission, the first tenders that were rolled out, which led to the creation of this vibrant sector that there is. And then you had this global energy transition into Irina. So your journey in a way, if I can say so, has moved in tandem with the growth of the sector in India. So can you talk about some of your key roles and some professional milestones which have defined your work in the sector? It's been a very interesting journey and in a sector that I've thoroughly enjoyed being a part of and I think as part of the very small founding team that it seems like a long time back and when you say three decades, it really does feel long. But it was a small team that was given a very big challenge and a very short time to deliver. And I think the fact that we did not just do a cotton paste of what many other countries at that time were doing which was more like feed and tariff, but really went the auction route. I think that pretty much has been a major breakthrough in which India's renewable energy sector has scaled and continues to grow because with that there was a very strong ecosystem that got built around the sector which was pretty much non-existent when the solar mission started. And I remember that it was a lot of the companies that started with one megawatt of solar and now they have a portfolio which goes into gigawatts of solar and wind. So it has been really quite fascinating watching the journey of how the ecosystem has responded. And also how good policies can really unleash economic development and also bring in the capabilities of the private sector to walk in tandem with what the government really is looking for. So it really has been a way for me to really reflect on the power of policy. And that's something that I have in many ways taken along with me as I've moved and was working at a much more global scale because at the end of it you do come to know whether a policy is working or not because you will not see any investments, you will not see any energy behind it if the policy is just not customized to the local conditions. So that's one thing but I think in a way what really happened and how it unfolded in India has helped me also work with many other countries who are just beginning their journeys. And to be able to work with a large number of those countries where the renewables was just beginning to show up and to be able to convince them to move along that path I think that has been something again which has been very satisfying. And you know whatever small contribution one could make in it has allowed me to really think back on where we are right now because right now the kind of work that is happening and the kind of messaging that at ID now we are really focusing on is the fact that while deployment is moving ahead you don't see the same kind of investments moving in the grids and the infrastructure. And also while there is a kind of a momentum around the electricity generation and electrification but you don't really see that momentum happening in the end sector and that is really leading to an understanding that you have to have a very holistic and a comprehensive view at what energy is all about. So while energy is a very much enabling aspect of how the economy will grow but it does impact every sector of the economy and till such time the countries don't start looking at a very coordinated approach around how you know various key sectors will use energy and what they can do with making their national objectives a priority in this case and things will not move at the pace that they are capable of moving and that's pretty much something that I've been now working on to see how to bring in that kind of more coordinated approach and advice countries accordingly. So let me stop here. Now thank you and it's interesting to know that how you are building these threats together and across so many different countries I started India because in a way India's signature of how renewable energy growth has happened that the renewable energy can be deployed at an unprecedented scale at the same time driving the costs down. So I want to first understand from your perspective that how important was long-term policy signals and clear national targets which were ambitious then which continue to be ambitious now in creating an investor confidence. So let me put it like this that you know the India story you know what it really tells - As you was, um, is a. Of course, the experience is important, but what it really tells you is how ambition becomes policy, how policy then goes ahead and creates markets, and how this dynamic between policy markets and the need for investments in great storage, financing and the institution building then plays out as you move into a more advanced stage. So in a sense, this is extremely good example of the challenges that have been tackled at various stages of this growth and they have been tackled in a way that are very much customized to how the institutional capacities in India are to what the status of the graders to what the status of the manufacturing is and also the developers and the ecosystem around it. So I think that is extremely important because in many ways India has demonstrated that as access increased or rather we achieved access in the last decade. This decade in India has all been about how do you meet the rising demand, how do you keep the power affordable, how do you reduce the import dependence and build domestic industries and also how do you bring in the industries and get them to walk along to decarbonize as we move forward. So and for all this to happen, it goes without saying that the long term policy signals are absolutely the key because what did happen as the Indian story unfolded was that there was very clear visibility of what India wanted to do in the short term but also in the long term. So there were there were targets that were set, clear targets were set for 2020 and then 2022 and then and and so on. Now just setting targets, many countries have done that, it doesn't help, we all know because these targets are of course critical to reduce that kind of uncertainty and to put our intent very make it very transparent and visible to the investors and to the developers. But you know the other signal that you're also giving through this is the is the signal that goes out to the manufacturers, to grid operators, to regulators and you know to the financing institutions. But also we need to be mindful that you know having a good policy, having clear targets, if it's not backed by very strong implementation plan, then it could lead to nothing because all this needs to be translated into something that can bring a pipeline of projects that are ready to get deployed and understanding from the from the utilities which are ready to to buy this power. You know it did involve putting out some guarantees in the shape of very strong PPAs but it wasn't just a PPAs. It was also doing a backend connect with who would pick up these the this kind of a supply. So where would the demand come from and how would that get equitably distributed throughout the country? So you know what I'm trying to say is that if India today has achieved 50% of its cumulative installed electric power capacity from non-fossil fields and we achieved this last year. So you know almost five years ahead of the target and DC target that we had given. It it hasn't been without working on multiple fronts and it needed you know needed all of the power sector to come together in its various you know implementation with all its implementation mechanisms, the regulators to come together, the financing institutions to come together and and you know to to be able to now move from just a capacity target to more of a generation target because you know even now the generation from non-fossil fuels is about 30%. So if that generation has to be increased you know this is like it's going to be a step change. So you can't keep doing more of the same and the the policies around it, the implementation mechanisms and institutional capacity all has to be rethought. So what I'm really saying is that it's not that you can be satisfied that you have now policy and it will just keep carrying you into the into the various stages that the energy transition will have to go through. But a continuous relook not at a incremental level, not at looking at one one regulation at a time or something like that but to really have that kind of a holistic thinking about what will it take to take us into the into the step change that the energy transition is really asking us for. Absolutely and I get back to these all these step changes and then what the next frontier of growths are. But before getting into that just very quickly this competitive procurement mechanism that India had where you're tying from one end to another end this has been one of the central you know point of this India RE story. For other developing economies do you think that you know there are lessons that can be drawn from India's RE growth stories, say procurement mechanism, how to get a states on board, how to redesign the PPAs or any other thing, what are the lessons that other global South nations can take from India's story. So you're absolutely right that the competitive procurement and was was very critical because the first very visible thing that it did was to bring down the costs very rapidly and you know that was a key in making renewables much more acceptable by the state utilities which you know are you know they have they don't have such a robust balance sheet. So that pretty much was was very helpful but I think the the fact that you you know you did see guarantees also being worked alongside because there was there was a lot of issues that came from the financial institutions about whether the state utilities which everyone knew were not in the best of shape would actually be able to pay the kind of tariffs that was being that had been discovered and I think having that kind of a arrangement where that kind of a guarantee was provided to the financial institutions by central government entity stepping in to to tie up the you know the procurement the supply agreements and the fact that before these auctions actually had happened you also had put out it was a small small kind of a experiment of 100 megawatts where one one megawatt was being awarded one to five megawatts for being awarded and that actually also brought up the confidence of local developers that they will be able to to put out a plant that till such time that the solar mission had come we did not have a single kilowatt of grid connected solar electricity. So there were there were multiple things that had been put together there was also a local content requirement knowing that you know we would be scaling up and manufacturing would need to happen eventually which was also part of this whole solar mission. So I I think you know we need to be mindful that there's not you know you do need a anchor which the the competitive procurement mechanism provided. But there were multiple other, I would say, smaller pieces that needed to come together to make it all happen. And which is clearly why you are now looking at auctions that are now starting, which are started for around the clockpower. So it's a very different kind of a scenario that's unfolding, which requires the developers to come up with much more firm power as they generate variable power. But my thinking really is that, is it perhaps also the time for the auctions to think about bringing in the states more actively? And doing a kind of a competitive bid amongst them to see which state would like to have more of the deployment capacity getting on the ground. Because there are also issues that now developers are facing about how do the transmission grids connect. So there is a very strong role that the states will have to also play and they need to become as active stakeholders in these large central procurement auctions. By bringing their effort in identifying land, in identifying the connectivity to transmission grids and mapping out those areas so that when the auctions do happen, there is really a kind of a healthy competition that happens between the states to get the developers into the state because it also means a lot of tax revenue. Let's not forget that agreed. Good you mentioned about around the clockpower because I wanted to come on that point only because energy storage is the next frontier in the growth of renewable energy. However, though different kind of models have come in cost and deployment remain uneven across several regions, you know, there is innovations happening technologies coming in, but still cost is yet to fall to a point where as you said distribution utilities, especially such as in India and several other countries should be comfortable with that kind of cost. I wanted to understand from you that what kind of project modeling or financial modeling is required which would help in scaling up of energy storage. So let me start by saying I think the initiatives that have been taken in India, which which have been funded from the power system development fund, which provides like a viability gap funding and also, you know, the other viability gap funding schemes. There are very good initiatives, but you know, as we move forward storage will become very much central to, you know, to the power systems that are taking in more and more generation from renewables. And so it should not just be treated like a add on, it has to be part of the entire, you know, system planning where there is a planning for flexibility, there's a planning for how, how the investments need to flow into managing this kind of a flexibility because if this is not done and if we go project to project, then, you know, we're really wasting and not optimizing. Let me say we are not optimizing resources to the best of how they can be in fact, you know, we have at arena, we've done, we've done a flexibility report which which estimates that by 2030. The power sector would require three times more daily flexibility, 2.5 than what it was in 2019 and about 2.5 times more weekly flexibility than what it was in 2019 and and almost twice as much as the monthly flexibility, which means that the need to integrate these flexibility requirements into the power sector modeling are becoming key. So right now when you do around the clock auction, it is the onus is on the developer to provide that kind of a, that kind of a storage that would allow them to provide around the clock renewables. But I think it's the times really come to look at where are the flexibility measures most optimally deployed because, you know, we don't have in India some huge resources that we can we can deploy inefficiently. So to bring in efficiency into the system then needs to be that modeling that enables us to identify the right places and then bring in investments to make that happen. So I would say, you know, it's as you know that storage can be multiple, it can have multiple dimensions, it can be storage that's responding to, to, to, to quick responses that might be needed, it might be storage that can be seasonal and more like as I said, weekly or daily or monthly. So the storage portfolio has to be seen as a portfolio. So it's a, it's a number of solutions, it could be also solutions like looking at sector coupling, sector coupling works very well, it could also be looking at whether they're interconnections, which could be cross boundary, which could have a role. Also, maybe, you know, looking at places where thermal generation using sustainable fuels can be brought in or pump storage as I spoke about. But clearly, you know, what's important is that this, you know, when you, when you are looking at a long term PPA, storage needs to be built in as a part of the contract. So, you know, you, you have to be looking at making the need for flexibility and thereby bringing in storage as something that gets priced by the market as well. So, you know, if you, if you want to look at, you know, avoiding the kind of curtailment that's currently happening in, in a number of projects, this thing has to be costed in, this has to have a, have a value. So, whether it comes through time of the day pricing, which regulators can think about. So, it's more demand side management, whether it gets combined with the mechanisms that are around peak tariffs or whether it is a reward to avoid curtailment or address grid congestion. You know, these are, these are some of the mechanisms that need to be priced when these kind of auctions are done. So, it's, it's, it's important that, you know, storage is not seen as just a, I would say just an add on to get to more firm renewables, but it has to be seen as a very important service that is being provided, that should be costed and valued. Because that is what will bring more renewables into the grid in the long term. Agreed. And on flexibility, I think when we talk about energy storage or making, you know, increasing the absorption of renewable energy, it seems the owners always falls on renewable energy project developers. They are responsible for around the clock, they're responsible for setting up energy storage, but I think going forward the whole power system needs to reimagine itself. And as you said needs to become flexible, you know, there, there are some plans in place like we keep hearing thermal power companies such as entities in India planning to have, you know, flexible, flexible thermal power generation. So, as to make room for absorbing as much as possible, the grid planning its, you know, operations around renewable energy deployment. So, I think both the policies and infrastructure planning going forward needs to center around renewable energy unlike fossil fuel like it used to be earlier. Would love to hear your thoughts. No, I absolutely agree because, you know, we are now, it's not as if we are newcomers in this sector anymore. We know which are the areas where more renewable energy deployment will help. happen we know it's western, western India we know which other areas where wind will happen whether it's through repowering or offshore winds and all. So in many ways you know there is a fairly clear mapping of those areas where resources variable renewable resources will get injected into the system and I think just as you know the modeling happens for making sure that the frequency of the grid remains stable I think there's also a need to start integrating this whole flexibility modeling into the into the system. So it has to actually become a part of the system because renewables is not there just it's not there to stay it's there to even grow. So and anything related to grid you know it takes a long time it has a guestation period it has a need to really think about how because it's a very interconnect we have a pan-India grid so you know anything that happens on at one end has consequences for the remaining other parts of the grid. So I think it's very important to look at all this but I was you know just we were doing this kind of a use case for AI study and in Spain we have found that with that big debacle they happen which happened and we all know there was a blackout in Europe they have now started integrating and investing very heavily into the AI applications that are helping them manage the grid and create that kind of a flexibility to manage conjections much better. So in fact the the capacity of the grid has got sizably enhanced. So you know these things happen when when you start thinking that flexibility something that needs to be built as a part of the existing system not as a add-on on you know on when there's a crisis and then we think about it. And as I said you know we we have to look at an optimum utilization of our resources whether it's coming as funding or you know whatever we have done in terms of grid planning because just having it as a part or on the onus of the developers in my mind is a very project by project approach and it's a very ad hoc approach that doesn't really look at what the strength of the power system really is which is which is the ability to integrate it into a systems thinking and a system kind of a planning and approach. Right I now come to a much wider issue and this pertains to global south including India where you know energy access it's affordability and decarbonisation needs to be pursued simultaneously especially for a country like India where we have the 2070 gold 2047 gold for net zero and you know becoming a developed nation simultaneously. So how should you know policy makers balance these objectives and if you want you can address it both for India and for global south. See I think let me talk about the global south first and from the many countries that we have been interacting with what's very clear in the developing countries that still renewables by themselves even though the cost have gone down there have been you know enough best practices around policy and all of that but you know unless the policy gets tied in with their development goals. The countries really are not looking at at any advocacy that looks at moving away from fossil fuels into renewables just for the you know sake of doing that kind of a substitution or switch which then means that I think also the geopolitics that have emerged around energy recently are are also showing up in a way that countries are looking at making sure that there is also energy sovereignty and I think that is also a very big you know very big kind of a situation that is confronting a large number of countries where there is volatility in the price of fossil fuels and that's impacting the economies. So you know naturally I think the countries the developing countries need to look at how they want to manage energy sovereignty or to develop their own resources in a way that also addresses their development goals. In the case of India you know I mean you know when we when we see the the kind of deployment that has happened it's it's not just you know the the fact that we've been able to address energy access but in a and keep keep this keep energy still affordable but you know it's you know you need to see that this has happened because of very strong political will backed by a policy that brought these aspects together. You know there's no one formula to say you know you have to do this to to reach your your objectives which you know any any policy would be the the objectives will be multiple objectives that they need to address. You have to you know look at how how affordability will will continue to happen when when you develop renewable energy you have to also look at in fact you have to look at the whole cost of the reliable service that renewables will provide which is you know including the cost of generation the grades the the storage the financing and of course the bills of the consumers who need to be buying. So we we have in fact been always stating that renewable power and energy efficiency you know these can to put it into perspective can of course reduce the health impacts of fossil fuel usage but more importantly have the ability to increase and improve the energy security insulate them from the volatility that we are seeing of the price shocks that are happening but also support local value creation that local value creation can come in so many ways it can be the local jobs that open up for the youth it can come in the shape of addressing the social inequities that energy access will bring and and can also you know we looked at by by some elements of local manufacturing or at least assembling that will create you know small kind of manufacturing hubs that can carry these forward so it while it has the ability to address these multiple goals but all these can you know to balance these kind of objectives the planning that is needed has to be very integrated and comprehensive so you know you have to look at how say for example utility systems going with renewable power can reduce the systems cost you have to look at how distributed renewables can support access can support resilience how energy efficiency can reduce the bills of the customers and reduce the size of the investment that is needed looking at clean cooking solutions and rooftop solar mini grids and productive use of this energy that can actually increase the productivity of many farm operations for example or making better health facilities available and directly impacting the households and livelihoods because very much as I said the the development agenda of the global south has to be at the forefront when we talk about renewable energy and and it's very much justified because obviously you know they're still at that stage of of getting access to all their all the citizens and you know need need to to look at solutions that can be at the best cost solutions. I mean, you know, I think, you know, if you look at also how habitation is growing, in most of these countries, is that you will have, and I've seen this in a large number of African countries, where there will be a few towns which have large population that's gravitated towards them, in those urban and peri urban areas. And then you have population which is mostly consisting of women, elderly and children that are left behind to eke out sustainable livelihoods and, you know, agriculture. And to be able to get access by drawing traditional, you know, lines of transmission, will not be the most optimal solution. So, very different solutions need to be looked at, but that's where renewable energy is so well, amenable to these kind of solutions. So, it's about, you know, making sure that when you get into these access solutions, there are so many ways in which the modularity of renewable energy deployment can really help in bringing these solutions to life. Right, but there remains a significant challenge and that pertains to money. Despite the rapid decline in cause, despite countries having efficient models, where they marry economic development with green energy growth, many countries in global south still struggle to find, you know, affordable capital. First of all, why does this financing gap persist? And what are some of the ways that this gap can be, you know, narrowed? So, talking about the financing gap and you're absolutely correct, you know, there is a lot of disparity between how the capital is flowing to the developed world, to the emerging economies and to the developing countries. Where to the developing countries, it's really almost, you know, in a single digit. That's the kind of percentage that goes to the developing countries. And the reason why financing has become expensive in these countries. I mean, of course, there's an issue of scale. So, how much capital is going? That is, of course, a question. But at what cost? So, if you have, if you look at a lot of developing countries and economies, you will see that the financial, the cost of capital is actually a factor of, of the currency risk being priced in, of factored in, the off-taker risk also getting factored in. There's also the political risk and the regulatory risk, the grid risk, for example, all these get factored in. So, if the cost of capital in developed countries is, is say X, the cost of capital in the developing countries which really need it, both in terms of the scale, but also need it at a lower cost. Because of all these things getting factored in, it becomes a multiple of about, it could go anywhere between four X to five X times. And that then means that everything becomes more expensive, the cost at which it, so it's not just the technology cost that we know is going down. But when you, when you start looking at how it gets financed and at what cost, unfortunately all these things get factored in to, to get to a LCOE which will be much higher, than in those countries which have a better risk management or a risk mitigation or are, are able to manage the currency risk or even the off-taker risk, for example. So, that is unfortunately the case, but there's another factor. I mean, there, we've also studied a large number of countries where we found that there is very heavy custom duty on the import of, you know, the equipment, the renewable energy equipment. Now, naturally that also adds to the cost. So, you know, I think the policy makers haven't really done their, they're thinking around how to make sure that, you know, this is really the need of the day considering that this has to be as a part of their whole policy to strategy thinking to do energy sovereignty and bring in more control over the energy sources. But if you actually start outpricing these as compared to gen sets, see it's not just that these equipment are getting a lot of custom duty, but you have to also compare it with what is being incentivized. If what is being incentivized is a gen set which runs on diesel, then you know that there's something very wrong. So, if I can just talk about a country which decided to really finish their custom duties and brought down the cost of import to almost what it cost and reduced that. Then, and this is actually what has happened in Pakistan, for example, where it's not been led by the government. So, the government, you know, I mean, we all know that they had a, they have a huge issue in terms of outages and all. But what they did do is to almost get the custom duty to a negligible amount and it was then the private sector that stepped in. And by private sector, I mean individual householders that said that we will be happy to import. And the entire, you know, market started getting flooded with, with assembling units that could actually deliver these solutions to the households that wanted these solutions put. So, you know, it's a, it's a very stark example of how even small changes when you look at the, you look at the impact of this on the larger economy and in terms of the so many jobs it would have created. And it has also, you know, brought in energy independence for many households from the grid and brought the cost down. So, it has had a huge impact on the lives of their citizens. So, you know, it, one has to look at also, not just look at the constraints that the developing countries might have. But look at those areas where they can actually do, you know, they themselves have to review their policies and create those enabling conditions for more deployment to happen. It may not be utility scale that is happening. It might be, you know, in kilowatts. But then kilowatts add up, which is what has happened. I mean, they've added huge amount of gigawatts, which is all coming from these small, small kilowatts that have got aggregated and added up. No, I agree to all of that and very fascinating examples across Global South. Pakistan is one of the case. India definitely is a case that we discussed at length here. Just very quickly and, you know, I would like you to summarize this conversation with this question that, you know, looking ahead in the next decade, you know, where do you see greatest opportunities for collaboration between India and other emerging economies? Where, you know, we both, all of us can, you know, bring some models together, bring some innovation together, especially financing, cross-country financing, some models that can be built, which benefits us all. So I think, you know, the huge number of very, very robust best practices that we have kind of mapped out and done deep dive in at Irina on what has really seemed to have worked well. And I think the greatest opportunities of collaboration will lie around practical implementation. So, you know, looking at how do you do collaboration around interconnection of grids that's going to be the key because You know, in India is a different case, but if you look at many other countries, their own market is very small. But when you can actually come together, develop interconnected grades and have a regional market going. That is when serious developers and manufacturers will come in to set up base to address those needs. So that's definitely something that I think needs to be looked at. Then of course, there is also, I think the need to look at how some countries, and I'll give you the example of Brazil here. How it has developed, they have this development bank called BNDS, which is a development bank and has worked a lot in the energy sector and a lot in the renewables also. But it is an institutional capability that has been built up over the years, which allows for foreign investment to come in. And at that institutional level, they are able to do the risk mitigation that investor from abroad requires. So it's an institutional capability that also needs to be built up because as the scope of this whole energy transition starts becoming larger. There is a need to clearly collaborate, look at examples of what is working well, of institutional buildings that are not what we have seen till now. But they're looking really far ahead to look at what needs to be done for the future. So that's also an area where I think collaboration could be very helpful. So we know that there is a collaboration in terms of bringing together the new development bank. For example, it was a good creation that came out of bricks that works on a very different premise than the earlier Brettonwood institutions. And I also think that the experience that has been built up and the very rich experience and expertise that has been built up in countries around managing their grid flexibility and managing their storage solutions. That's a clearly an area where I think collaboration could really help in just being able to do very strong knowledge sharing. Again, as I said, there is a aspiration from a lot of countries to have manufacturing within their countries but their markets are not large enough. And which means that there is this real opportunity to develop regional markets, which come up not just as markets for bringing in manufacturing capacity and building an ecosystem but also function as a very efficient electricity market. So these are again, we know from the example of Europe how the electricity market is works very well between the many countries that are part of the EU. So that again is something that in my view is a very strong area where countries could collaborate and learn from each other. Yeah, let's hope so that happens and we'll see very interesting innovative projects to come out of it. You mentioned about Intercontrogate and I think that is a fascinating project. We'll see how it goes forward and I think there are several areas of collaboration. So many economists have talked about building financing models where countries can finance each other's growth. But thank you so much. This was such a 360 view of the sector not just from the point of view of India but from the global south and only you could have done that. Thank you so much for this conversation. Very, very glad to have talked to you today on this. No, thank you so much. Thank you for this opportunity. It's always a pleasure. As I said, to talk to people from the sector because I think we need to spread awareness and we need to bring that these conversations to the forefront. And which I hope, you know, the work that you're doing would definitely be contributing to. So thank you. Thank you again. Yeah, happy to do that and we'll continue to do it. The conversation with you actually has given us several ideas for our upcoming episodes and we'll be posted on that. Thank you again. Visit our website right to us at [email protected]. We are on Twitter. You can follow @DIHPodcast and get in touch with the two hosts at Surjay and Aton Leapai. Thank you for tuning in. Join us again for our next episode.