Infrastructure Quarterly

Vision

To create high-quality leadership and management capacity for the infrastructure sector and understand the industry’s sustainability by delivering quality education, contextual research, and continuous outreach.

Mission

• Create top-quality educational and training programs.
• Facilitate learning through online programs.
• Undertake research that is contextual to the Indian and developing country context.
• Develop tools and decision support systems to support the infrastructure practice.
• Undertake continuous outreach to support the sector.
• Serve as a "Go to" place for the infrastructure sector in India and abroad.

The Punj Lloyd Institute undertakes various initiatives to guide the infrastructure sector toward efficient and sustainable development through research initiatives, knowledge-sharing events, and training public officials and industry professionals. To meet its vision, the institute works closely with corporates in three verticals, Education, Outreach, and Research. A brief on various activities of the institutes is given below.

AMPI: Co2024

AMPI Class of 2024

Synopsis: India is the world's fastest-growing major economy and home to the world's largest population. Robust Infrastructure is the backbone of any economy and acts as a growth vehicle. Large Infrastructure projects, such as roads, highways, power plants, ports, townships, and real estate sectors, have recently witnessed a growing demand for capital. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) are instruments to raise public money. These instruments address the need of investors and corporations both. Investors diversify their portfolios with regular income, whereas corporations get access to significant public funds. This ALP intends to study REITs & InvITs model in the Indian context and investors' behaviour and response to take part in the investment cycle to boost the growth of Infrastructure in India.

List of ALP Team members

• Himakar San
• Venkata Soma Shekar Gopishetty
• Mahesh Varma Mallepally
• Likith Chandra Koka
• Prabath Kumar
• Pinnelli Raghukiran
• Sidartth Gupta
• Vani S Yadav

ALP Team 1

Synopsis: In 2022, India had 138 data centres with a power consumption of 637 MW. The figure is projected to grow to 812 data centres that will consume 5000 MW. Daily CO2 emissions of a 40 MW data centre is 480,000 kg CO2/day, significantly higher than the daily CO2 emissions of a typical passenger car (23 kg CO2/day). Data centres can switch to clean and renewable energy alternatives to reach the net zero goals of India and the world. Power generated by solar energy, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, tidal, and fuel cells can reduce the CO2 emissions of a data centre. The intermittent availability of these alternative energy sources needs storage solutions. One such solution is thermal batteries. Chemical batteries have drawbacks such as limited energy density, slow recharge times, degradation and limited life span, and negative environmental impact. This ALP evaluates green initiatives and technologies such as thermal batteries, energy optimisation strategies, cost analysis and returns on investment (ROI). A set of recommendations will be presented for implementing energy-saving measures in designing a green data centre.

List of ALP Team members

• Kiran Kumar
• Harshil Pawar
• Supriya Guha
• Anshul Soni
• Sharath Kumar

ALP Team 2

Synopsis: A large number of metro rail corporations are operating in red. Some effective strategies are required for sustainability. The reasons for losses are two-fold: (1) High cost of operations, and (2) Revenue shortfall. This ALP's scope is limited to metro railway corporations in India. The primary data will be collected through visits to Delhi Metro Rail, Noida Metro Rail, Hyderabad Metro, etc. The secondary data will be collected from the annual reports of metro railway organisations worldwide, the World Economic Forum, and the World Bank Data. A Pareto analysis of costs will be used to examine the operational costs and revenue streams. The team will propose recommendations related to cost reduction (cost reduction, use of renewable energy, automation with AI) and revenue increase (community EV facility, licenses to commercial complexes). Financial analysis of solutions (cost-benefit analysis, payback period, return on investment (ROI), and social cost-benefit analysis) will be presented.

List of ALP Team members

• Akash Bansal
• Aditya Garg
• Debasis Samal
• Karthika Jayasree
• Rishab Mahaveer Patil
• Ujwal Kumar
• Parul Jaidik
• Audarya Vivek Bansal

ALP Team 3

Synopsis: Within the Indian infrastructure space, the adoption of green tech within commercial and office space is high. However, the same cannot be said for the residential sector, which forms more than 75% of the real estate in India. This ALP develops a business case for adopting green technology and methods by end customers within residential townships. Our research and analysis will include value benefit analysis, financial analysis, review of construction methods, and existing models. Through this exercise, a survey of the existing green infrastructure space and an analysis based on several metrics will be done. In addition, the team will recommend steps and measures to improve further the business case of green Infrastructure within the Indian real estate context. The findings of this ALP would help in enhancing the adoption of green practices. The target recipients of the results of this research will be the end retail customers and real estate companies.

List of ALP Team members

• Dharam Domalapalli
• Kamaljeet Sachdev
• Suman Shatanand
• Mohit Makkar
• Sahil Aggarwal
• Venu Madhav Chippa
• Rahul Majage

ALP Team 4

Study on "A Decade of Infrastructure Development in India: Trends and Insights"

The study covers seven sectors: Airlines, Airfreight and Logistics, Road and Rail, Marine, Highways and Rail tracks, Construction and Engineering, and Real Estate. A double-pronged approach has been taken for analysis using secondary data. Firstly, a study of the available literature on the performance of the Indian infrastructure sector has been done. Secondly, we conduct a financial analysis of the companies in the infrastructure sector in India using the database from Capital IQ.

We now aim to gain the perspectives of industry leaders and leading banks on the challenges and opportunities in the infrastructure sector. Following the discussion, we plan to create an industry survey on the ISB research platform to gather primary data from industry experts.

• We intend to gain industry leaders' perspectives on the challenges and opportunities in the infrastructure sector. We will host a round table conference with industry leaders, policymakers, and NITI Aayog officials to present our findings. We will also create an industry survey on the ISB research platform to gather primary data from industry experts.
• We will prepare a report focusing on industry-wide observations on the performance of the infrastructure sector and present this report to CII and NITI Aayog. We will release the final report through a formal event by March 2024.

PLIIM Team with Shri. B. B. Swain