Tarun Popli has over 25 years of experience across the power sector value chain, particularly in business development, bid management, investment approvals and project management. Having spent nearly two decades at the Tata Group, he specialises in business excellence initiatives, energy transition and power management at Tata Power. Currently, he is spearheading business excellence activities in the T&D vertical at TP Southern Odisha Distribution Limited. Earlier, he worked in business development within the renewables & T&D business verticals in Tata Power and successfully completed acquisition and execution of many national and international assignments.
According to him, India’s power sector is witnessing rapid growth, with total capacity exceeding 500 GW by late 2025 and nearly half of it coming from non-fossil sources, positioning the country as a global leader in renewables. Key trends include surging demand due to economic growth and recurring heatwaves, near-universal household electrification, a strong policy focus on clean energy and grid integration challenges.
Indian power sector is undergoing many changes amid the energy transition, rising load growth, increasing competition and the provision of subsidised power to consumers. The major unresolved challenges are managing peak demand, reducing aggregate technical and commercial losses, and ensuring grid stability with increasing intermittent renewable sources. Despite rapid growth in generation and transmission capacity, the distribution segment continues to face financial stress due to high technical and commercial losses, tariff constraints and subsidy burdens.
For him, the most exciting business vertical has been business development, particularly in international geographies. He has led several international projects end to end, with full profit and loss responsibility. These assignments which involves working across countries, meeting people, leading project teams and managing stakeholder expectations, has played a significant role in his personal development as a leader.
A passionate result-oriented leader, he describes his management style has visionary, democratic, collaborative and compliance-driven. He holds an engineering degree from Delhi Technological University (formerly the Delhi College of Engineering) and completed his master’s degree in management from International Management Institute, New Delhi. He is also a law graduate from Delhi University.