‘Energy Procurement Is Now a Boardroom Issue’: Raahul Hari Nair on Powering AI Data Centres
In this interview, CHI’GRIDS Founder Raahul Hari Nair discusses AI data centre power demands, renewable energy procurement, and why energy strategy has become a boardroom priority for businesses navigating India's evolving power landscape.
India’s data centre and energy management ecosystem is entering a phase of rapid expansion, driven by artificial intelligence, cloud adoption, and increasing digital consumption. According to industry estimates, India's AI data centre market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.2% through 2033, while the energy management systems market is projected to expand at a CAGR of 17.9%. The overall data centre market is expected to more than double to $22 billion by 2030, with installed capacity reaching nearly 5 GW as enterprises scale AI infrastructure and hyperscale computing.
As energy availability becomes an increasing bottleneck, power procurement and grid optimization are emerging as strategic priorities rather than operational concerns. Against this backdrop, StartupTalky spoke with Raahul Hari Nair, Founder of CHI’GRIDS, about AI-driven power demand, renewable energy procurement, grid realities, and how enterprises can navigate the complexities of India's evolving energy landscape.
AI Data Centres and India's Power Infrastructure
StartupTalky: India's data centre sector is adding capacity rapidly, driven by AI workloads and cloud scale, but power has become the primary constraint. In your view, what does the power demand of a serious AI-grade data centre actually look like, and why is India's current grid and energy procurement framework not well-suited to meeting it?
Raahul Hari Nair: AI-grade data centers are not the properties of typical office or cloud providers. Their workloads are denser, continuous, and much more power hungry, and they don't have much of a grace period before failures. That’s an issue. AI data centres require enormous quantities of high-quality, dependable power, and India’s power grid and procurement system aren’t up to the job.
Power supply is patchy across the states, the renewable energy is intermittent, and the country’s busiest data centre hubs are under pressure on transmission. And while that remains a huge opportunity, AI infrastructure is just going to get bigger from here on out. So the industry will need a more flexible framework for purchasing electricity, a grid upgraded for the long term, storage to help solve the renewables dilemma, and energy management systems to help reduce power losses.
Avoiding Mistakes in Open Access Solar Procurement
StartupTalky: Open access power procurement allows large consumers to source renewable energy directly from generators. But navigating state-level regulations, transmission charges, and banking limits makes it genuinely complex. What are the most common mistakes large commercial or industrial buyers make in their first open access solar procurement, and what does a well-structured agreement actually look like?
Raahul Hari Nair: Too many companies enter the solar procurement without a proper understanding of the intricacies of the market. The biggest mistake is not understanding the regulatory aspects and the significant impact of realistic expectations on tariffs, reservations, and schedules. The buyers sometimes go for the lowest tariff and thus end up losing a lot in terms of load variability and no confidence in supply.
Some more points which are sometimes missed are the open access terms and conditions, state-wise open access regulations, restrictions with banks, rights and restrictions for load planning, generation schedules, cross-subsidy charges, state-wise transmission losses, etc. The best agreements on the market are well structured with rent-sharing mechanisms, realistic expectations on generation, realistic and flexible consumption planning, and high visibility into regulatory exposure. Open access procurement’s future would be more about energy planning and not just this lowest tariff game.
Avoiding Mistakes in Open Access Solar Procurement
StartupTalky: With the Iran conflict pushing global energy prices higher and India's manufacturing and data infrastructure sectors under cost pressure, are businesses now treating energy procurement strategy as a board-level conversation rather than a facilities management one? What has changed in how senior leadership engages with energy decisions?
Raahul Hari Nair: Yes. Energy procurement is long past the optimization of usage. Power supply and price risk, sustainability, and regulatory exposure are now issues that are discussed at the board level as geopolitical tensions escalate and fuel prices become more volatile. Meeting key business objectives was always the primary objective for energy.
Now, though, strategic budget decisions are being made around power as an enabler of capacity, performance, and business continuity. In the old days, they had a bad name in the manufacturing and digital infrastructure, abusing their power in the industry. In recent years, however, AI infrastructure and rising power density have opened up big opportunities for two-force commoditization of supply chain management. In high-density environments requiring long-term energy planning, energy procurement is more of a strategic fuel purchase decision.
Bridging the Gap Between Models and Reality
StartupTalky: You have described CHI Grids as being built with a bias toward operational reality rather than theoretical frameworks. In the energy management business, what is the gap between what energy consultants and software platforms promise and what actually happens in the field when energy plans meet real grid behaviour?
Raahul Hari Nair: The vision is all about sourcing from renewables, power optimization, forecasting, and studies to minimize costs, but in practice, there is little mention of grid or delivery problems with transmission bottlenecks, intermittency, fluctuating internal and external demand, state-level policy and deregulation differences, grid instability, and other factors that influence the delivery of power to each enterprise.
The majority of consulting models are old-fashioned models. For a desired outcome, enterprises would have to forego the changing operational realities for the final model. Many software platforms offer dashboards, but do little to help the executive to act on their analysis and decisions.
The secret is visibility in real time. Good enough visibility into all aspects of energy usage is good, but the key is being able to adapt consistently to changing operating realities or grid conditions, and the business should be able to do that.
Open Access and India's 500 GW Renewable Ambition
StartupTalky: India is pushing toward 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, and open access is supposed to be one of the key channels for large commercial buyers to absorb that capacity. What is the realistic share of renewable capacity that open access can absorb, and what policy or infrastructure changes would unlock significantly more?
Raahul Hari Nair: Open access could be one of the biggest growth drivers for the adoption of renewables by commercial and industrial consumers in India. Open access could provide a chance for many industrial sectors, such as manufacturing, data centres, airlines, hotels, and capital-intensive infrastructure operators, to not only secure a new renewable energy supply, but one that could be better tailored for their specific needs and longer-term consumption patterns.
However, the potential for growth in renewable energy under open access is enormous, but this depends on the removal of structural bottlenecks like delays in transmission project approvals, lack of uniformity in regulation across Indian jurisdictions, limited access to banking facilities, and cross-subsidy surcharges. In the medium to long term, India will require more grid training and testing, such as integration of on/off-grid demand response and storage solutions, which will help support higher renewable penetration for commercial and industrial consumers.
Building Hybrid Energy Systems for Mission-Critical Data Centres
StartupTalky: Data centres require exceptionally high power reliability, typically 99.999 percent uptime. Renewable energy, even with storage, introduces variability that is difficult to reconcile with that reliability requirement. How does CHI Grids approach the hybrid energy architecture challenge for a mission-critical facility, and what does a responsible renewable integration plan for a data centre actually look like?
Raahul Hari Nair: Data centers must be reliable. Reliability is the number one priority when operating data centres, so the integration of renewable sources into the power mix for data centres cannot be considered a replacement strategy. Reliability counts, but load management is probably the most valuable strategy for data centre operators.
Generators can respond to the power demand in the data centre. The main aim for the operators is often how the load can be handled. The load can also be controlled by the power source, with the ability to store and use the power from the grid when needed. Storage technologies for renewables already exist.
The observed power demand can be combined with renewable generation, storage, and conventional generators to incorporate renewable generators into a hybrid model. High visibility into the load also allows for managing the load by taking advantage of the available renewable energy. It is important to understand what renewable generation is available, how the loads behave during specific time periods of the day, and how backup capacity can be implemented where it is needed.
Lessons From EdTech and Building Trust in Energy
StartupTalky: As a second-time founder, you have spoken about applying lessons from the edtech world to building CHI Grids, particularly around trust as the core product and complexity that only scales when turned into simple workflows. What has been the hardest thing to unlearn from your previous startup experience, and what principle has transferred most directly into building an energy management business?
Raahul Hari Nair: One of the biggest things I had to unlearn from the edtech space was that speed is king. Speed is great for product development because those developing for consumers continue to evolve quickly, but when you develop against infrastructure and the energy sector, things move at a different pace. If you get something wrong in the energy sector, it can be difficult to correct, and it can have operational as well as financial impacts.
So, running at speed is never a real option. What I found most helpful from my time in the education space is that you don’t want more dashboards or more data for the sake of it. What customers want from both platforms is the ability to make decisions about complex activities. So the product that I am trying to build for the energy sector is all about building a language that allows enterprises to efficiently navigate through highly complex, invisible layers like procurement, compliance, carbon, and power optimisation, and building workflows that they can use in real time. The other big thing that I've learned in the course of my life is to earn trust before you expect to transact.
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