“Our customers can count on us for both legacy solutions and future-ready energy projects.”

• 09 Sep 2025
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

National Electrical Equipments Corporation (NEEC) was founded with a clear mission: to strengthen the power distribution ecosystem. From the very beginning, the company has specialized in manufacturing and exporting power and distribution transformers, serving both domestic and global markets. With electricity being the backbone of economic and social growth, NEEC has consistently focused on delivering innovative, energy-efficient solutions that meet the evolving needs of the power sector. In this exclusive interaction with The Masthead, Saurabh Patawari, Managing Partner – NEEC, shares insights on the company’s journey, its current landscape, and the challenges shaping the future.

How is NEEC ensuring a balanced growth across its three business verticals, trading, manufacturing, and turnkey solar services, in the current market landscape?

Our focus is on making each vertical reinforce the other rather than compete for attention. Manufacturing remains the backbone, because transformers are still central to India’s energy infrastructure. Trading supports this by giving us agility to source and supply complementary equipment without delay.

Solar EPC, the newest vertical, aligns us with where the market is headed, toward sustainability and distributed energy solutions. By treating these as interconnected rather than standalone silos, we ensure steady revenues from our traditional base while channeling resources into emerging opportunities like solar. The outcome is not just balanced growth, but resilience. Our customers can count on us for both legacy solutions and future-ready energy projects.

What are the key challenges you encounter in scaling up solar EPC projects?

In solar EPC, scale often exposes where the bottlenecks truly lie. The challenge is not demand, it’s precision at speed. Every solar project comes with a different technical profile, and that means standardization has limits. When volumes increase, the risk is that customization slows the line or corners are cut.

Neither is acceptable in a safety-critical solution. Add to that the unpredictability of component supply chains, especially for breakers and protective devices that are globally sourced, and the execution rhythm can easily be disrupted.

Our way forward has been to design more modular system architectures, invest in better inventory planning, and tighten the feedback loop from field engineers to our execution teams. That way, scaling up doesn’t dilute reliability, which for us is the non-negotiable measure of success.

In what ways are India’s rising renewable energy targets shaping your turnkey solar plant projects?

India’s renewable energy goals are no longer abstract policy; they are reshaping project expectations on the ground. Developers and utilities want solar plants that are not only cost-effective but also grid-resilient and compliant with stricter technical standards.

For us, this translates into greater emphasis on system reliability, protection schemes, and seamless integration with distribution networks. The targets also compress timelines, because projects are being rolled out faster to meet policy milestones. Our turnkey approach has had to adapt by prioritizing modular design, faster procurement cycles, and closer coordination with state utilities. In essence, the targets are driving us to treat every solar EPC project as part of a larger national grid strategy, not just an isolated installation. That shift in perspective is what ensures our work remains aligned with the country’s long-term renewable roadmap.

What initiatives has NEEC taken to embed sustainability and energy efficiency into its product design and development process?

Sustainability for us begins at the drawing board. Every transformer design is evaluated for how it can lower energy losses over its lifetime, because efficiency at scale has a far bigger environmental impact than a single innovation. This approach has led us to refine core materials, optimize winding techniques, and adopt insulation systems that reduce thermal stress, all of which extend service life and reduce wastage.

The same thinking guides our solar EPC designs, where modularity not only simplifies installation but also minimizes resource use in execution. On the factory side, energy audits and process improvements help us cut consumption during manufacturing. These may seem like incremental steps, but together they create products that consume less, last longer, and fit seamlessly into India’s wider shift toward sustainable power infrastructure.