The board of Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL), in a recent meeting, approved the formation of a new subsidiary to undertake the company’s telecom and digital technology business. Approval was also given for investment in a new EV charging station at Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra.
PGCIL has moved closer to its plan of hiving off its telecom and digital business with the company’s board approving the creation of a wholly-owned subsidiary, to this effect. The board approval was given in a meeting held on October 11, 2021, though the name of the proposed subsidiary has not yet been formally announced.
In around August this year, K. Sreekant, CMD, PGCIL, had indicated that the company was keen to hive off its telecom business into a new subsidiary. The basic reason for PGCIL offering telecom-related services was due to the synergy between power transmission and telecom. Primarily, the right-of-way that PGCIL secures for its power transmission lines can be gainfully used for laying telecom lines.
However, the telecom business is now getting more sophisticated. There are several aspects of telecom that are not really connected to power transmission, Sreekant had said. Moving forward, telecom will involve digitization and other spectrum-centric features.
Given this, a separate subsidiary for undertaking telecom and digital services business was called for, the CMD said. As of August 2021, PGCIL had already received approval from Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) for the formation of a separate telecom-centric subsidiary.
Currently, telecom has a very small share in PGCIL’s overall business. In FY20, income from telecom operations stood at Rs.707 crore, representing just about 1.7 per cent of the company’s consolidated income for the year.
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EV charging infra
In an independent development, the PGCIL board, in its meeting on October 11, 2021, accorded investment approval for setting up of an electric vehicle charging station in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, under the “FAME India Scheme Phase II,” at an estimated cost of Rs.14.23 crore. The commissioning scheme for the EV charging station is 12 months from the date of agreement to be signed between PGCIL and Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT). The timeframe for setting up of associated infrastructure like kiosks, toilet blocks, etc. is 24 months, calculated similarly.
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