Towards emPOWERING India : S K Chaturvedi, Chairman and Managing Director Power Grid Corporation of India Limited

POWERGRID has envisaged various endeavours for the year 2009: e-Procurement, Enterprise Asset Management system and Information Services”

The POWERGRID portal acts both as the information portal as well as single platform for web service delivery. What other services are in pipeline?

POWERGRID has adopted a multidimensional approach for empowering all users of its IT enabled services and facilities covering all its functional areas for the benefit of all stakeholders such as the Organisation, employees, government, clients-state electricity boards and peer organisation, business partners/vendor community, citizens and society at large.

The services which are in the pipeline are – HRD Information Management Services, HR Appraisal Information Management Services, Engineering Information Management Services, Library Information Management Services, Vigilance Information Management System, Contracts Information Management System and Rajbhasha Information Management System.
 
Your organisation extensively uses e-Training through video-conferencing. What are the key learnings and outcome of it?

Video conferencing facility is being used for online interaction among personnel of all levels at Corporate Centre and Regional Head quarters on regular basis for various purposes e.g project monitoring, budget monitoring, e-Training and top management reviews. The use of video-conferencing system has resulted  in huge cost saving, time saving, online interaction and knowledge sharing, quick decision making and prompt resolution of problems.

What are the other e-Governance projects lined up for 2009 ?

POWERGRID has envisaged various endeavours for the year 2009: e-Procurement, Enterprise Asset Management system and Information Services.

POWERTEL offers India with telecom network which acts as a support to the e-Governance initiatives of Govt of India and various state governments. What is the current business scenario of POWERTEL and what do you foresee in the near future?

POWERTEL is having an all India telecom backbone network of 20,000Kms covering over 110 cities and towns including remote areas in North East India and Jammu and Kashmir. The services offered include end to end bandwidth, ethernet private leased lines and Internet services. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) / Virtual Private Network (VPN) services are also offered in association with other service providers. However, POWERTEL will offer MPLS/VPN services on its own very soon. The major telecom operators, Government departments, Multi National Companies (MNCs) and media are in our clientele.

POWERGRID has laid Optical Ground Wire (OPGW) only on 1/3rd of its power transmission network. Depending on demand POWERGRID can lay Optical Fiber on its remaining part of transmission network in a phased manner. POWERTEL is poised to become a strong National Long Distance (NLD) player and Integrated Telecom & IT service provider by establishing 40 GB Next Generation Network and state-of-the-art Data Centres and further we would be entering into sharing of our tower infrastructure for rural connectivity for which we have conducted pilot projects successfully.

What are the key challenges that you have faced in providing telecommunications network in India?

POWERTEL is a relatively new entrant in the telecom business segment as our core business is on power transmission. The major challenges that we have faced   in this sector are highly competitive and dynamic market environment, building networks to meet high Service Level Agreement (SLA) demanded by customers, high cost of RoW and intra city access network for last mile connectivity.

“POWERGRID has the unique advantage of being an Owner turned Consultant. The feed back obtained while carrying out the Operation & Maintenance of its projects is ploughed back to its design departments for continual improvement”

POWERGRID provides consultancy to various international governments. What is your USP?

Based on our rich experience earned through implementation of huge transmission network in India by adopting latest technology in multifarious topology and environment, POWERGRID has emerged as a renowned global consultant in Power Sector. The expertise of POWERGRID in the field of studies, design, engineering, procurement, inspection, project management, construction supervision, human resource development, spare parts management, operation and maintenance have enabled it to  successfully undertake large number of consultancy assignments for national and international clients including Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Bangladesh and various State Electricity Boards in India. POWERGRID has so far executed 280 consultancy assignments with aggregated business of more than US$ 275 million. POWERGRID has a well established and dedicated Business Development Division backed up by more than 2600 experts, who not only cater to the requirement of the in-house projects but also provide consultancy services of international standards to various power utilities and State Electricity Boards and other clients outside the country as well. 

Nilakshi Barooah
nilakshi@egovonline.net

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