Appointments

ReNew Power appoints Kedar Upadhye as group CFO

ReNew Power, India’s leading renewable energy company, has announced the appointment of Kedar Upadhye as  group chief financial officer (CFO) to help drive its next phase of strong growth.

The company has also appointed Vikash Jain as its global general counsel and Vikram Kapur as chief growth officer to help lead the company’s expansion journey over the next decade, including its push into new clean energy segments such as green hydrogen. 

Upadhye comes with over 22 years of diverse and global experience.  Prior to joining ReNew, he was president and global CFO, Cipla, one of India’s largest publicly traded pharmaceutical companies, where he headed the global finance and information technology functions and worked across multiple geographies, including the US. 

His leadership experience includes core financial reporting, business partnership, business model realignment and cost optimisation, corporate finance, and global investor relations, apart from implementing several high-impact, cross-functional transformational projects.

Jain comes with rich and varied international experience of over 26 years in compliance, governance, and litigation. In his last role, he was group general counsel for Vedanta Resources, which included being general counsel for Cairn Oil & Gas. Jain has also held leadership roles at Transocean, Jubilant Energy, and Hindustan Oil Exploration Company. 

In the newly created chief growth officer role, Kapur, with over two decades of professional experience, will help build new businesses such as green hydrogen and carbon markets, as well as international partnerships to enable the core and nascent businesses. 

Prior to joining ReNew, he spent 17 years at McKinsey & Company, where he was a senior partner leading the energy and material practice. He also was at Unilever for over four years. 

All three leaders will report to Sumant Sinha, chairman and CEO, ReNew. 

 “I am delighted to welcome Kedar, Vikash, and Vikram, whose recognized professional calibre, global expertise, and strategic insights will significantly add to our leadership capabilities as we capitalise on the strong growth opportunity across the clean energy spectrum to help India meet its climate goals,” said Sinha, speaking on the appointments.

The leadership hires come as ReNew’s gross total portfolio jumped nearly 20% to ~12.1 GW at the end of April from 10.2 GW at the beginning of 2022. ReNew continues to lead the industry as India’s top utility-scale solar developer in 2021, according to Mercom India. 

ReNew’s recent surge in its gross total portfolio comes after signing a number of Power Purchase Agreements with utilities and long-term purchase agreements with corporate buyers this year. It also announced a joint venture with L&T and IndianOil for green hydrogen last month. Earlier this year, it partnered with US-based stationary battery leader Fluence for energy storage in India.

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