At Ankur Capital’s annual meet in Bangalore on September 8th 2025, we had the honor of hosting Nandan Nilekani, the chief architect of India’s remarkable digital transformation. In a fireside chat with Ankur venture partner Kamakshi Rao, Mr. Nilekani spoke about his vision for the digitized future of electricity in India and in the world.
The major change in electricity now is the ability of electricity users to also generate and store electricity. New supply patterns - for example, the variability in renewable generation, or the ability of people to store and sell the electricity in their electric cars – require a language for common communication between entities in the electric grid, similar to the internet’s underlying communication protocols. The digital energy grid based on such a communication protocol can discover participants in the grid, read their data, know that the data is genuine, and use this data to co-ordinate otherwise siloed physical flows of electricity.
Co-ordinated flows are more efficient and allow for new ways to use electricity. With this co-ordination of physical flows of electricity, India can more efficiently build 10 MN solar rooftops and integrate them into the grid. People can more efficiently and cheaply charge their cars or 2-wheelers. Micro-entrepreneurs can buy batteries to store electricity when demand is low, making money by selling to grid, or to their neighbors, when demand is high.
The government of India and related entities are working to effect this shift in India now.
