Adani comes for wind turbines, testing Suzlon’s hard-won calm

It signalled intent. After scaling India’s renewable energy landscape faster than anyone else, across solar parks, transmission networks and green hydrogen, the Adani Group now wants to manufacture wind turbines not just for itself, but for the market.

The ambition is vast. Adani has said it wants to deploy around 30GW of wind capacity by 2030, or a third of the country’s 100GW target by then. Until recently, Adani’s turbine manufacturing was widely assumed to be a captive exercise, designed primarily to feed the group’s own rapidly expanding power needs. The Opera Energy order has punctured that assumption. Adani is positioning itself as a supplier, not merely a buyer, and is clearly testing whether its capital strength and execution speed can be translated into credibility in a business that judges performance over decades rather than quarters.

For Suzlon Energy Ltd, India’s largest wind turbine maker and one of the few global survivors in a brutally cyclical industry, the timing is unsettling. The company has only just emerged from a long financial winter. It is debt-free, profitable again, and benefiting from a renewed policy and market push for wind as India confronts a structural mismatch in its power mix.

Yet, just as conditions turn favourable, a new class of capital heavy competitors is stepping in. Apart from Adani, the JSW Group and Reliance Industries Ltd have also disclosed their intent to manufacture turbines. These are conglomerates that can absorb early losses, compress supply chains and tolerate long gestation periods.

“This industry has a very long memory," says Girish Tanti, vice chairman of Suzlon. “Wind is not forgiving if you cut corners. It always comes back to performance over 20 years. You cannot hide mistakes in this business."

That sense of memory—corporate, technological and financial—runs through Suzlon’s present strategy. Unlike newer entrants, the company has lived through both exuberance and near extinction. That experience now shapes how it views the next phase of competition, including the arrival of some of India’s most aggressive and well capitalized groups into what was once its uncontested domain.

Lessons written in debt

There was a time when Suzlon itself embodied the same restless ambition now associated with Adani. In the mid-2000s, founder Tulsi Tanti rode India’s early renewable boom to global prominence. With a dominant domestic market share, he leapt into Europe and the US, acquiring Belgium’s Hansen and Germany’s REpower in quick succession. Suzlon aimed to challenge the world’s biggest turbine makers—Vestas, GE and Gamesa—on their own turf.

The strategy was bold but brittle.

Suzlon expanded faster than its systems, testing protocols and the managerial depth it could support. Blade failures at customer sites in the US exposed gaps in life-cycle testing and quality assurance. These were gaps that domestic markets had previously masked. Orders were cancelled, repair costs mounted and reputational damage spread quickly.

Debt ballooned just as cash flows tightened. Suzlon’s debt increased from ₹5,162 crore in 2008, during its initial public offer, to touch a peak of ₹17,749 crore in 2015.

The REpower acquisition, intended to deliver technology and global standing, became mired in regulatory restrictions, cultural resistance and funding constraints that Suzlon had neither anticipated nor prepared for. A decade ago, the government instituted a system of reverse auction to buy power which made wind energy more expensive than solar, further messing Suzlon’s business case.

At its nadir, Suzlon was suffocating under leverage, selling prized assets and diluting promoter stake simply to survive. The equity capital of the company increased from ₹742 crore in 2015 to ₹2,744 crore as of September this year, while the promoters holding fell from 28% to 11.73% during the same period.

Tulsi Tanti retreated from the global stage, refocusing on the domestic market and smaller turbines. The very segment he had once considered a stepping stone became his destination.

Looking back, Girish Tanti, the youngest brother of Tulsi Tanti, is candid about the emotional and strategic toll of that phase.

“The opportunity was real and the ambition was real," he says. “But wind is not a business where you get quick validation. You do not know in two or three years whether you were right. You only know after 10 or 15 years."

That delayed reckoning, he says, makes wind uniquely punishing. “Earlier, the market rewarded installation speed. Customers wanted machines on the ground. Today, they ask one question. Can you deliver power generation consistently, and can you stand behind that machine for two decades?"

The collapse forced Suzlon to confront uncomfortable truths. Speed could destroy trust faster than it created scale. Global manufacturing requires governance, not just confidence. And leverage magnified every operational mistake. These were not abstract lessons as the Tantis were forced to dilute their stake to below a controlling interest. Suzlon’s stock was hammered for a decade.

Those lessons now sit quietly, but decisively, at the core of Suzlon’s strategy.

The Chalasani reset

When J.P. Chalasani took charge as chief executive officer in 2016, Suzlon’s problems were existential. The company was burdened with debt, its credibility with lenders was strained, and confidence among customers and suppliers was fragile. Growth, market share and ambition were secondary concerns. Survival came first.

“My first assessment was very simple," Chalasani says. “If we do not survive, nothing else matters. Strategy, market share, technology—all of that comes later."

Chalasani’s background shaped his response. At the Anil Ambani-led ADAG Group, he had handled large power projects, complex financing structures and regulatory minefields. He had seen how quickly leverage could turn from an enabler into a trap. Suzlon, he believed, needed discipline more than drama, predictability more than projection, and execution more than ambition.

The mandate from Tulsi Tanti was blunt and non negotiable. “Tulsi told me very clearly, do not touch R&D (research and development)," Chalasani says. “You can cut costs anywhere else, but R&D is sacred. If you weaken technology, you kill the company permanently."

That instruction became the organizing principle of the turnaround. Suzlon pared overheads, exited non-core activities, renegotiated debt, tightened working capital and rebuilt relationships with lenders, but ring-fenced engineering and product development. The reset was not cosmetic. It was structural. Product launches slowed, testing cycles lengthened and risk appetite narrowed. Life-cycle performance, service quality and reliability, once secondary to speed, moved to the centre of strategy. Suzlon stopped behaving like a challenger chasing global scale and began acting like a company determined not to repeat its own history.

“We took pain everywhere else," Chalasani says. “People underestimate how much discipline that requires. Cutting cost is easy. Cutting the right cost is very hard."

Today, Suzlon is net debt-free and operationally steadier. Analysts Abhishek Nigam and Preksha Daga of Motilal Oswal Securities say, “Suzlon’s turnaround is visible not just in revenue growth but also in balance sheet repair, with net debt firmly in negative territory."

The company’s borrowings stood at ₹397 crore in September, while cash in hand was ₹701 crore.

Chalasani, however, resists triumphalism. “This is not the time to be arrogant," he says. “Wind always humbles you."

Why wind is still hard

India’s renewed interest in wind is rooted in physics, not sentiment. Solar capacity has surged, but its generation profile does not align with demand. Electricity floods the grid during the day, then falls short in the morning and evening peaks. This creates price distortions and supply stress that storage alone cannot yet resolve at scale.

“Currently, as there is a shortage of power during non-solar hours, wind power is enjoying a premium," says Chintan Shah, founder of SustCred, a renewable energy project funding platform and a former director of the Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency. “But demand is not the biggest challenge for wind."

Shah argues that execution, not appetite, remains the real bottleneck. Transporting blades across narrow highways, securing right of way permissions, arranging specialized cranes and managing local resistance often prove more difficult than winning bids. “A lot is loaded against wind than just demand," he says.

The economics underline the point. “Crane operators make more money than wind companies," Shah says. “In China, cranes can erect five or six turbines a month. In India, it is two or three."

That difference alone explains why wind capacity in India has grown more slowly than solar despite comparable potential. The friction is structural, not cyclical.

Suzlon’s long operating history gives it an advantage here. “Execution is where experience really counts," Girish Tanti says. “You can buy capital, you can hire talent, but you cannot buy learning that comes from doing this across thousands of sites."

Policy, too, is evolving. Tenders today insist on renewable power during all times of the day. “This makes wind the only viable alternative now as you cannot solve the grid problem with solar alone," says Arvind Bansal, chief executive of Continuum Green Energy, a power producer.

Capital rushes in

It is against this execution heavy backdrop that Adani’s entry into turbine manufacturing must be judged. “There is no doubt Adani brings scale," Shah says. “This will be the first truly formidable local competition Suzlon has faced."

But Adani is not alone. Reliance Industries, which has committed tens of billions of dollars to new energy, has publicly acknowledged that wind will be essential for building round the clock renewable portfolios. JSW Energy has outlined plans to ramp up wind capacity sharply as part of its renewable roadmap and has explored deeper control over equipment sourcing.

The renewed interest reflects a broader shift. Large developers want to take charge of their project in a supply constrained market. They want influence over manufacturing, logistics and timelines. Adani, for instance, wants to tap into the Kutch region in Gujarat which boasts of good winds through the year.

The Khavda project in this region is envisaged to be the world’s biggest renewable energy park. A senior Adani executive, who did not want to be named, said the group is sparing no expense to build their own turbines.

Earlier, the industry assumed that Adani would only manufacture 5MW-plus turbines to suit the Kutch region, but the 3.3MW turbines sold to Opera are quite similar to the ones made by Suzlon.

The height and size of blades determine energy generation. In India, in non-coastal areas, wind speed increases with height but it is tough to transport bigger turbines. The current optimum size is 3-4MW—most manufacturers operate in this segment.

Says Shah: “Selling turbines may not eventually be Adani’s focus area, but their presence in the business will have a significant impact on capital deployed going forward."

Yet, wind has a way of testing confidence. The global turbine industry has shrunk, not expanded, over the past two decades. Despite rising demand, only a handful of manufacturers have survived repeated technology cycles, pricing pressure and warranty liabilities. The reason is simple. Wind turbine manufacturing sits awkwardly between infrastructure and precision engineering, demanding patience that capital markets often lack.

The Tanti legacy

As Suzlon enters a new phase, the question of legacy looms large.

Tulsi Tanti is no longer at the helm (he died in 2022), but his influence remains embedded in the company’s culture. The responsibility of carrying that legacy forward now rests with Vinod Tanti (older brother), besides Girish Tanti. Vinod, a recluse who prefers to operate alone and is media-shy, is credited as the brain behind Suzlon’s technical competence.

“Vinod understands Suzlon in a way very few people do," says Chalasani. “He has seen the highs and the lows. That perspective is extremely valuable when you are building for the long term."

That view is echoed by investors. Dilip Shanghvi, chairman of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and a significant shareholder in Suzlon, acknowledged Vinod Tanti’s role during an informal interaction with Mint. “Vinod has played a very important role in stabilizing the company and giving it strategic direction," he says.

Shanghavi is among the few who bet on Tanti’s vision when he was in trouble. In his personal capacity, he had bought a 23% stake in Suzlon for ₹1,800 crore.

Shanghvi, in an interview with Bloomberg in May 2019, explained that his eyebrow raising investment was based on the assessment that within the renewable energy sector, Suzlon had “the product and the future pipeline, which will allow them to grow."

He has admitted in private that the internal rate of return on his investment was comparable to the returns of the broad equities market.

If Vinod Tanti represents continuity and internal strategy, Girish Tanti has become Suzlon’s outward-facing anchor, engaging with policymakers and industry forums as wind re-enters the national conversation.

“Policy matters enormously in wind," Girish says. “If policy is not designed correctly, no amount of technology can compensate."

The next phase

Suzlon’s current numbers inspire more confidence than its past. According to the Motilal Oswal analysts quoted earlier, “Suzlon’s order book of over 6GW provides reasonable visibility over the next two years."But execution risk remains high. “The next phase of growth will depend on timely execution and working capital discipline," the analysts say.

Debt-free status has restored credibility, but it has also imposed restraint. Suzlon is unlikely to chase growth at any cost again. “We will never again grow at the cost of survival," Chalasani says. “That chapter is closed."

Adani’s arrival sharpens the contrast. One player carries the memory of near collapse. The other brings in the confidence of scale. For Suzlon, the hardest question may not be whether it can compete, but whether it can take measured risks without forgetting why it once stopped.