BrightNight India Advisory Council Built for Success

Powerful leaders to drive sweeping large-scale renewable power adoption.

Inlet Beach, FL – Today, BrightNight announced the first two members of its newly formed India Advisory Council: Ron Somers, CEO of India First Group and former President of the U.S.-India Business Council, and Rajiv Lall, former Managing Director and Chairman of the Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC).

BrightNight founder and CEO, Martin Hermann shared his excitement stating: “Energy industry leaders from across the U.S. and India are joining BrightNight because they see the rapid energy market transformation and know that BrightNight is best positioned to meet the increased demand for innovative renewable power.” Hermann added, “I’m confident these distinguished additions will draw on their history of success to support BrightNight’s continued growth across India’s renewable power market.”

Indeed, the new advisory council members are well-suited to India’s growing market. Ron Somers will draw upon his experience as a U.S.-India business relations leader and success in delivering large-scale power projects with Cogentrix to promote BrightNight’s value to corporations across India. Throughout India, corporations are a growing group of customers looking for renewable systems tailored to meet their energy needs and to increase their operating resiliency. Also, as India’s investor community looks to grow its renewable power portfolio, Rajiv Lall will draw upon his track record of driving innovation through investment with IDFC, Warburg Pincus, Morgan Stanley, and the World Bank.

BrightNight’s India Advisory Council development follows two recent and high-profile hires for senior leadership positions: Sajay K.V. and Naveen Khandelwal, who now lead BrightNight’s operations across India.

While India’s adoption of renewable power sources has increased rapidly, its decarbonization agenda remains challenged by a market that still views renewable projects as a source of energy and not capacity. In order for India to achieve its goal of growing its renewable supply from 100 GW to 450 GW by 2030, it will need to integrate hybrid, dispatchable systems that optimize renewable power generation and protect the grid from generation that is out of step with demand. BrightNight was founded to address these exact market needs and is seeing rapid success with their hybrid, dispatchable, renewable power solutions designed to provide baseload generation at the highest value and lowest cost to the customer.

Ron Somers

Ron Somers has dedicated the last 30 years to driving the growth of the U.S.-India commercial relationship. At India First Group, Ron assists U.S. and Indian companies in formulating and realizing their business strategies, bringing development experience gained on the ground as a recognized business leader with deep connections in the U.S.-India corridor. During his 10 years living in India for UNOCAL and Cogentrix, Mr. Somers led efforts to bring nearly 2 GW of much-needed power online. At USIBC, he spent a decade leading the largest bilateral business association in the United States, and during his time at the helm of the India Private Power Initiative for USAID Delhi, Mr. Somers guided investment as well as iterations of policy, mobilizing goodwill between the world’s two largest democracies, resulting in companies delivering more than 80 GWs of innovative, clean, and renewable power to India.

Rajiv Lall

Rajiv B. Lall has over three decades of experience in academia, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, international investment banks, and private equity, working in South East Asia, China, Africa, the U.S., and India. His expertise spans infrastructure finance, sustainable and impact investing, capital markets, trade, and macroeconomic policy issues. He has played an active role in shaping the finance and policy landscape internationally. He was Chairman of IDFC Ltd., a public-private partnership focused on infrastructure finance, the Managing Director at Warburg Pincus, and was Founder and CEO of IDFC Bank, now known as IDFC First Bank. He is currently Professorial Research Fellow at the Singapore Management University where he also serves on the Management Committee of the Singapore Green Finance Centre.