The 2nd Annual Conference of India Utility Knowledge and
Networking Forum gets underway at Le Meridien, Delhi on February 13, 2014 with
a focused agenda on “operational challenges and best practices” to help utility
operators to learn and make improvements in their areas including strategy,
policy, contract, services and operations. The theme this year is “Complementing Reforms Bottom-up: Through
Improved Operationalization and Engaged Local Ecosystem”.
Essentially for all the PPP models in the power, water and waste
sectors, the key issue is building operational viability while engaging with
local stakeholders. Key topics covered at both tracks will thus include
discussions on how to thrive in local ecosystem (Political, Local
Administration, Law-Enforcement & Media), key parameters of operational
performance across multiple variants of private participation, changes to
existing model and contracting for viability and inclusiveness, innovations in
service provider ecosystem, treating customer services as a marketing function
and lastly institutionalising financing of loss reduction.
This year the conference has day-long, parallel tracks on Power and
Water Distribution. The schedule is power packed with over 300+ business
leaders and functional heads as delegates from the utility industry. Bigger
than the IUKAN 2013 conference, it will be a gathering of thought leaders,
private operators, public utilities, vendors, regulators, urban local bodies
and professionals working in a fast emerging segment of PPPs in utility sector.
The first track of the conference focuses on Power Distribution and
features around 20 industry leading speakers across 5 panels including Mohd.
Suleman - Energy Secretary of MP Govt., Prabhakar Kukde – Ex-Technical Director
MSEB, R. C. Agrawala – MD of NPCL, Sunil Wadhwa – CEO of IL&FS Energy, Praveer
Sinha – CEO of NDPL, Reji Pillai – President of India Smart Grid Forum, Mr. S
Jayaraman – CTO of Essel Utilities, Jagdish Chelaramani - BU Head of GTL,
Suvajit Das - AVP Project Advisory & Structured Finance of SBI CAPS, Vinod
Kala - MD of EVI, and Chris Gaines – CTO of Exceleron.
The second track of the conference takes a focused look on the Water
Distribution and Waste Water management business models and their operational
challenges and solutions. This track features another 20 industry leading
speakers across 5 panels including Alok Shiromany - Head Technical Committee of
JnNURM, Vandana Bhatnagar - Economist WSP-SA of World Bank, Shrikar Padeshi –
Municipal Commissioner of Pimpri Chinchwad, Anil Sole – Mayor of Nagpur and
President of All India Mayor Council, Malini Shankar - Principal Secretary of
Govt. of Maharashtra, M.S. Unnikrishnan - MD, Thermax, Darpan Jain – MD of Karnataka
Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation Limited and Patrick
Rousseau – CMD of Veolia Water India.
A Vision Session will be held towards the end of the panels jointly with
Dr. Isher Ahluwalia – Chairperson of ICRIER and also Chairperson of High Powered
Committee on Urban Infrastructure, and Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala – Professor of
IITM and Member of Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Committee talking about
their work and innovations towards inclusive growth in improvement of service
delivery in these sectors.
Along with the conference this year, the IUKAN forum introduces the “Utility Best Practice Awards” aimed to
recognize practical and innovative ways employed by utility operators, their
business partners and stakeholders to drive improvements in systems and service
delivery to end consumers. The Awards intend to bring a paradigm shift in the
way a utility looks at its Grounds Team, which is the actual asset and wealth
manager for the utility.
Best practice nominations have been
received from across utility service providers, public and private utilities.
Those nominating include leading public utilities like MSEDCL, BESCOM, DGVCL,
Mysore City Corporation, Vadodara Municipal Corporation, PGVCL, UGVCL and
private utilities like BSES Rajdhani, BSES Yamuna, CESC Limited, NPCL, JUSCO, Enzen, GTL Limited,
MVV Water Utility Private Ltd., Tata Power Company Ltd, Tata Power Delhi
Distribution Ltd, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd, WESCO, Orange City Water.
Service providers ecosystem also actively responded to the awards with
nominations coming from TCS, A2Z, Secure Meters, Raychem RPG, Mechatronics, ADCC
Infocad, AIVA Engineering, Anjani Logistics, Creative Entrepreneurs, E-Cube
Energy Trading, E-Link, Mobilcule, OSSR, OZO Nano Sciences, Pranat Engineers,
SMS Infra Ltd. and many others.
The nominations are categorized as per business
practices in areas of Customer Services and Complaint Management, Metering
Effectiveness and Smart Infrastructure, Billing and Collection, Operations,
Maintenance and Asset Management, Loss Reduction, Theft Control and Vigilance, People
Management and Development, Bid Management and Operations Takeover, Audits,
Compliances, MIS Reporting, Innovations and Others. Nominations will be judged
by eminent 4 Juries drawn from IUKAN Advisory Board and the results will be
declared during the conference. Along with acknowledgment to industry’s best
practices through the Awards program, select entries would be published in a Best
Practice Journal, to be released at the conference on 13th Feb, 2014.
Mr. Rahul Bagdia, Director of pManifold and secretary of the IUKAN Forum
says, “The private participation in the sectors of waste, water and power is
under constant pressure to establish an inclusive business model while reducing
losses and improving services. This requires stakeholders to engage
transparently to discuss challenges, co-create solutions and learn from the
best practices implemented. ‘I, you can’ or ‘IUKAN’ is a fundamental positive
drive that we want to instill in these emerging business models. The
prospective and early players thus can get engaged with the established vendor
ecosystem and mature utility players to achieve operational success while implementing
reforms faster for improvement of service delivery to end consumers.”
IUKAN forum is the initiative of pManifold. IUKAN 2014 this year is
co-organized by Emergent Ventures India and is supported by GTL, NPCL and Enzen
as Associate Partners. Creative Entrepreneurs, ADCC Infocad, Exceleron and
eLink Software Technologies are associated as Partner to Utilities while
Accenture is the Best Practice Showcase Partner. Other partners to the event
include NPTI, Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), India Water
Foundation (IWF), India Electron Exchange (IEE), Alliance for Energy Efficient
Economy (AEEE), Asia Power Quality Initiative (APQI), India Smart Grid Forum
(ISGF), India Power Sector, Energetica, EA Waters and Attrait Solutions.
Please visit www.iukan.in for more
information, registration, sponsorship and association
