Electricity operates at the speed of light, demanding a precise equilibrium between supply and demand – where a single miscalculation can precipitate sweeping blackouts across regions. Leadership in this high stakes’ environment is defined by technical mastery, strategic foresight and bold innovation. Prayas Gupta, Chief Technical Officer for Asia and Africa at Jivo Energy exemplifies this dynamic blend, guiding the company’s transformation of the global energy landscape.
With a track record spanning continent, Prayas’s leadership covers milestone projects such as commissioning of India’s first private high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission system, the setup of advanced remote operation centers and the oversight of high-voltage transmission networks nationwide. His role in launching Asia’s pioneering stand-alone battery energy storage facility and spearheading One of the first transmission-connected, utility-owned BESS projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Each achievement under his stewardship is not merely a solution to technical challenges – it is a blueprint, shaping the clean energy future for communities and industries worldwide.
Foundation: Bridging Theory to Engineering Leadership from the Ground Up
Prayas Gupta’s professional journey began at LNCT, Bhopal, where a strong grounding in electrical engineering theory quickly propelled him to transform complex concepts into impactful infrastructure. His early career at leading organizations including POWERGRID, Adani Transmission and IndiGrid provided him with invaluable exposure to the complexities of managing large-scale power systems. Working closely with substations operating at voltage levels ranging from ±500kV HVDC to 132kV – 765kV EHVAC, he gained firsthand insight into the critical balance of innovation, operational resilience, and uncompromising safety that underpins reliable power delivery in demanding environments.
Facing extreme real-world challenges, Prayas developed a discerning ability to balance engineering theory with practical effectiveness. This firsthand experience is now a cornerstone of his leadership approach, enabling him to collaborate insightfully with equipment manufacturers, engineering teams, and executive leadership – driving decisions grounded in strategic vision and reliable execution.
As his scope expanded from substations to transmission project commissioning, SCADA, protection systems and stewardship of renewable portfolios across Asia and Africa, Prayas leveraged lessons from India’s accelerated energy transformation to inform continent-wide strategies. His capacity to translate field-tested success into scalable frameworks for diverse regulatory and technical environments cements his reputation as a leader who converts infrastructure theory into enduring operational and business value.
First-Mover Advantage: Charting New Energy Frontiers
Prayas Gupta has built a reputation for excelling in pioneering environments where high risks are balanced by the potential for transformative sector-wide impact. He contributed significantly to one of India’s early private high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission projects, which marked a key milestone in demonstrating private sector participation in a domain traditionally led by public entities. This project helped set new standards in power transmission technology and operational efficiency.
Building on this foundation, Prayas assumed strategic leadership roles managing nationwide high-voltage transmission system operations and pioneered innovative approaches to reliability centered maintenance within key projects. He also played a central role in leading India’s initial standalone, utility-connected battery energy storage system (BESS) deployment. Navigating a landscape with limited regulatory frameworks and technical standards, his team developed comprehensive solutions covering connectivity, protection schemes, communication protocols, and workforce training. Through integration of advanced SCADA systems for real-time monitoring and maintenance, this effort has contributed substantially to establishing a deployment framework that supports India’s growing clean energy storage sector.
Prayas’s work exemplifies not only technological advancement but also the capacity to translate innovation into scalable models that guide the evolution of power infrastructure.
Leadership Philosophy: Empowering Innovation with Purpose
Prayas Gupta’s leadership approach goes beyond conventional innovation frameworks. He establishes ambitious yet achievable visions that inspire teams with purposeful challenges. He cultivates an environment where experimentation is encouraged, and learning from setbacks is embraced rather than penalized. Under his mentorship, emerging talents are entrusted with leadership responsibilities early on, nurturing confident professionals equipped to manage the complexities where strategy meets execution.
A distinguishing facet of Prayas’s leadership is the focus on building in-house capability and fostering trust within teams. Rather than relying solely on external consultants, he champions upskilling and internal collaboration, enabling his teams to take ownership of new initiatives from design to execution. This self-sufficiency not only accelerates the pace of innovation but also cultivates a strong sense of loyalty and continuous growth among team members—making him one of the most respected leaders by those who find themselves advancing both professionally and personally under his mentorship. Team members are encouraged to experiment, iterate, and bring forward solutions, thereby strengthening the culture of innovation and resilience.
His teams focus on measurable outcomes such as improving grid reliability, operational efficiency, reducing carbon footprint, and expanding energy access. By linking technological progress with tangible impact, Prayas fosters motivation grounded in results rather than abstract notions. He actively promotes cross-functional collaboration among commercial, operations, and finance units to enable holistic problem-solving and to develop versatile leaders prepared for the evolving clean energy sector.
Digital Transformation: Integrating Strategy and Operations
A central pillar of Prayas Gupta’s digital strategy is the integration of real-time SCADA and advanced analytics systems, providing a unified and transparent operational view across expansive and complex energy assets. By deploying these technologies, Prayas shifts organizations from a reactive posture—where teams address issues as they arise—to a proactive model where insights drive early intervention. Predictive analytics highlight anomalies before they escalate, ensuring grid reliability, minimizing costly outages, and enabling smoother integration of new renewable and storage technologies. This technological approach is paired with stringent technology selection, relying on structured pilot programs, knowledge-sharing with international experts, and quantitative benchmarks. By doing so, Prayas avoids the pitfalls of unproven trends, instead focusing investments on mature solutions such as green hydrogen, scalable artificial intelligence, and secure blockchain applications, all validated through real-world use cases.
Prayas’s signature is aligning technical progress with business value. He ensures each digital initiative, from advanced grid management to asset optimization, is measured against criteria like grid stability, revenue enhancement, and compliance with industry regulations. His cross-functional acumen unites technical, operational, and financial teams under a shared vision, making the benefits of transformation both tangible and sustainable. By proactively managing change offering comprehensive training, clear communication, and phased rollouts – he transforms potential disruption into an engine for organizational development and renewed professional purpose. This holistic integration makes digitalization not just an IT upgrade, but a catalyst for enduring business and talent success.
Technology Evaluation: Navigating Hype with Rigour
In a sector flooded with emerging tech buzz such as blockchain, AI, solid-state batteries, Prayas applies a disciplined evaluation framework focused on scalability, reliability, and sustainability alignment.
His rigorous process includes pilot validations, meticulous manufacturer engagement, global expert consultations, and realistic field-testing to filter viable innovations from transient fads. Data-driven benchmarking turns subjective excitement into objective decisions, enabling early adoption of promising tech balanced by strategic caution, sparing resources and focusing investments on genuine breakthroughs.
Translating Technology into Business Value
Engineering brilliance without business relevance is hollow. Prayas excels at aligning technical projects with business metrics and executive leadership values: grid stability reducing costly outages, maximizing renewable revenue by minimizing curtailment, frequency regulation enhancing utility income, and deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades.
This requires fluent communication across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, ensuring projects satisfy technical, economic, and competitive criteria. Externally, he bridges gaps with regulators crafting new frameworks, manufacturers balancing client expectations with capabilities, and grid operators integrating novel assets, fostering trust that propels innovation from concept to marketplace success.
Managing Disruption with Stability
Recognizing that innovation disrupts workflows and creates resistance, Prayas manages change through transparency, phased rollouts, comprehensive training, and empathetic communication. He frames change as empowerment, not criticism, transforming apprehension into opportunity for growth and skill enhancement.
This approach nurtures trust, reduces anxiety, and balances continuous operational excellence with ongoing technological evolution, a hallmark of high-performing organizations in dynamic sectors.
Milestones Reflecting Strategic Vision
Prayas’s career milestones symbolize his vision beyond technical achievement. He played a key role in India’s first private HVDC transmission, managed complex 765kV transformers & Reactors repairing and pioneered centralized operation centres with nationwide reach.
His proudest accomplishment: leading Asia’s largest utility scale battery energy storage system delivered ahead of schedule. It’s a project requiring real-time regulatory alignment, multi-vendor coordination and rapid team capability building under intense pressure. This success underscored his belief in combining innovation and leadership to accelerate clean energy transitions amid regulatory and market challenges.
Driven by Continuous Learning and Purpose
Beyond operational duties, Prayas relentlessly pursues knowledge through technical journals, global forums like CIGRE and IEEE and mentoring emerging talent. This expands his perspective, prevents insularity and keeps curiosity vibrant.
His ultimate motivation lies in creating energy systems that safeguard the future while delivering cleaner, reliable power, reducing carbon footprints, expanding economic opportunity and improving resilience. He urges future leaders to embrace lifelong learning, welcome change and link innovation explicitly to societal benefit, ensuring that technology fulfils its transformative promise.
Architecting a Sustainable Future
As CTO for Asia and Africa at Jivo Energy, Prayas shapes critical decisions influencing the speed and equity of fossil fuel transitions across regions. His leadership exemplifies the multifaceted CTO role: technical expert, business translator, stakeholder bridge-builder, change manager and visionary.
The infrastructure he helps build today will power economies for decades, with standards and frameworks guiding future projects globally. By pioneering landmark initiatives and converting breakthroughs into scalable, repeatable models, Prayas is not just constructing energy systems. He’s architecting a cleaner, more resilient, and inclusive energy future across continents, turning impossibilities into inevitable progress.
Expanding the Energy Horizon: Beyond Infrastructure
Prayas recognizes that building cutting-edge physical infrastructure is only one facet of transforming the energy landscape. Equally crucial is fostering ecosystems where innovation can flourish sustainably. He champions partnerships that extend beyond traditional boundaries, linking technology providers, financiers, policymakers, and local communities. By weaving such networks, he ensures projects are not isolated feats but integrated advances that stimulate broader economic development, social inclusion, and environmental stewardship.
These empower local engineers, operators, and regulators with knowledge and skills critical for sustaining and scaling energy innovations. His approach addresses the perennial challenge facing many emerging markets: how to embed techno-economic progress within resilient, locally owned systems that outlast project lifecycles.
Championing Diversity and Inclusion in Clean Energy
Prayas actively embraces diversity and inclusion as foundational drivers of innovation and organizational strength. In a sector often characterized by technical complexity and rapid evolution, varied perspectives invigorate problem-solving and creativity. He cultivates teams enriched by gender, cultural, and disciplinary diversity, ensuring solutions reflect the multifaceted realities of the regions his projects serve.
Prayas’s visible commitment to inclusive leadership sends a powerful message, inspiring aspiring professionals to envision themselves at the forefront of global clean energy transitions.
Navigating Climate and Geopolitical Challenges
Operating across Asia and Africa, Prayas’s work inherently engages with complex geopolitical and climate realities. Energy infrastructure development intersects with national policies, regional integration ambitions, and international climate commitments. He adeptly balances these dynamics, ensuring that projects align with broader sustainability goals while remaining adaptive to shifting political and economic contexts.
His foresight in anticipating climate impacts on infrastructure resilience, such as designing battery storage facilities to withstand temperature extremes and variable weather, demonstrates a holistic understanding of energy systems as socio-technical entities embedded within vulnerable environments. This integrated perspective positions his projects to remain durable and effective amid inevitable climate uncertainties.
Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Future-Ready Grids
Always forward-looking, Prayas actively explores emerging technologies beyond mainstream Transmission, renewables and batteries. He investigates potentials in digital twins, virtual models that simulate grid behaviour, to optimize asset management and system reliability. Advanced AI applications for real-time grid balancing and predictive analytics are also within his strategic purview, poised to enhance operational agility.
Fostering Community Engagement and Social License
Prayas understands that energy projects do not exist in isolation from the communities they affect. Building social license to operate is fundamental for long term success. He prioritizes transparent communication and meaningful stakeholder engagement from project inception through operation.
For instance, in projects involving indigenous or marginalized communities, he advocates culturally sensitive dialogues that respect local knowledge and concerns. By integrating community voices into project designs and benefits-sharing mechanisms, he helps transform infrastructure development into inclusive growth catalysts, fostering trust and collective ownership.
Balancing Ambition with Realism
Despite his visionary mindset, Prayas maintains a grounded realism that tempers ambition with practical constraints. He rigorously assesses timelines, budgets and technological readiness, ensuring projects remain viable and deliver value without overpromising.
This balanced approach reduces risk, builds stakeholder confidence and sustains momentum- key attributes amid the fast-paced, often unpredictable clean energy landscape. His capacity to navigate this tension between aspiration and execution further distinguishes him as a pragmatic and inspiring leader.
Legacy of a New Energy Era Architect
Prayas’s multi-dimensional impact transcends technical landmarks. He cultivates ecosystems, uplifts talent, bridges cultures, and nurtures trust – all vital ingredients for the enduring energy transition his generation commands.
His story illustrates that redefining clean energy infrastructure across continents demands more than innovation. It requires vision combined with empathy, courage matched with collaboration, and strategy executed with humility. Through his work, Prayas not only powers grids but energizes hope for a sustainable future where technology serves humanity’s highest aspirations.