Jagjeet Singh Sareen: A Young & Passionate Turk Overhauling The Global Green Finance & Investment Realm
Jagjeet Singh Sareen
Director-Finance & Investments
Still young and enthu, Jagjeet’s list of accomplishments is colossal. He is an economist by training and also holds a management degree. For the last 16 years he has worked on various aspects of Green Finance and Investments for various public and private sector entities like TERI(a think tank), Ernst & Young (a leading private sector consulting firm), Green Climate Fund, Asian Development Bank(ADB), the World Bank Group, and more, to build an ecosystem for green investments. Recently, he has been recognized with Chevening Gurukul Fellowship for leadership & excellence and his work at the ISA by the UK Govt. He is a member of Chatham House and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
In an in-depth conversation with CEO Insights, he speaks about his current role at the ISA and the various wins that he has achieved at the organization.
Tell us about ISA as an organization. What role do you play as the Director- Finance & Investment of the organization?
The ISA is an alliance of solar-resource-rich countries conceived by India & France, to collectively address the key common challenges and scale up the solar energy applications in line with their needs, in a safe, convenient, affordable, equitable and sustainable manner. Where the current solar investments are around $150-160 billion a year, we have an exclusive mandate to help member countries mobilize it to $1 trillion by 2030.
Now, when it’s comes to me playing the Director- Finance & Investment role here, it’s very intricate. Since it’s the first international organization co-led by India and headquartered in India, it brings a huge sense of responsibility towards me- being an Indian as well as a Finance & Investment professional. My last 2.5 years of ISA were leading investment & finance division, which is kind of managing both internal finance and mobilizing investments for our member countries, and, I think my last 15-16 years of experience (global policy making, developing financial instruments, designing of global funds, directing financial projects, and more) came
in a very distilled format here. It being a new organization, I started right from scratch.
However, challenges did follow. To overcome those, we built a knowledge base at ISA about our member countries, eg: an investment ecosystem analysis report– ‘Ease of Doing Solar Report for 80 member countries’. Such reports were capable of providing good sense of the investment ecosystem to our member countries- essentially looking at country-wise risk profile (policy risks, regulatory risks, opportunities, and basic investment parameters). I'm a firm believer of continuous learning & innovation, hence as a leader looking at the changing global solar market trends, I readily take healthy risks. Another thing I am doing along with my Director General efficiently at the ISA is bringing a team of solid professionals from India & across the globe to help our member countries deliver on this big mandate. I've been currently, promoted as an Assistant Director General Strategy & Resource Mobilization here at ISA.
How do you imply the best of strategy for the optimizing the performance & management of major projects at ISA?
To simplify, I go about with OSOWOG (One Sun, One World, One Grid) concept introduced by our honourable PM Narendra Modi that implies ‘the Sun never sets’ and is a constant at some geographical location, globally, at any given point of time. According to this, if we could interconnect various countries & continents together, we could have electricity flowing 24/7.
At the ISA, we have project timelines till 2050, hence breaking it down into- 2030, 2035, 2040, and 2050, deducing the near, medium, and the long term obligations of economic and finance & investment case, we are working it out with the help of best brains in power sector. My objective is to invest the Corpus Fund such that it maximizes returns for ISA as an organization, hence carving expenses, I try to show value to our contributors that their money is being well invested and generating maximum returns for running & expanding the organization.
In ISA terms, we have three buckets to ascertain it. First is what we call a bucket of readiness- enabling activities, here we mobilize grant money with the support of policymakers and by training of trainers, professionals- putting the good projects together. The second bucket is risk mitigation buckets, in this bringing in various kinds of money to address various kinds of risks we are framing typical investment structures (blending finance instruments, mixing patent capital with private sector equity to have the waterfall of returns, principle, junior tranche & senior tranche). And, the third bucket is investment mobilization, it’s where
However, challenges did follow. To overcome those, we built a knowledge base at ISA about our member countries, eg: an investment ecosystem analysis report– ‘Ease of Doing Solar Report for 80 member countries’. Such reports were capable of providing good sense of the investment ecosystem to our member countries- essentially looking at country-wise risk profile (policy risks, regulatory risks, opportunities, and basic investment parameters). I'm a firm believer of continuous learning & innovation, hence as a leader looking at the changing global solar market trends, I readily take healthy risks. Another thing I am doing along with my Director General efficiently at the ISA is bringing a team of solid professionals from India & across the globe to help our member countries deliver on this big mandate. I've been currently, promoted as an Assistant Director General Strategy & Resource Mobilization here at ISA.
Vision to make global firms to manage their investments with green finance
How do you imply the best of strategy for the optimizing the performance & management of major projects at ISA?
To simplify, I go about with OSOWOG (One Sun, One World, One Grid) concept introduced by our honourable PM Narendra Modi that implies ‘the Sun never sets’ and is a constant at some geographical location, globally, at any given point of time. According to this, if we could interconnect various countries & continents together, we could have electricity flowing 24/7.
At the ISA, we have project timelines till 2050, hence breaking it down into- 2030, 2035, 2040, and 2050, deducing the near, medium, and the long term obligations of economic and finance & investment case, we are working it out with the help of best brains in power sector. My objective is to invest the Corpus Fund such that it maximizes returns for ISA as an organization, hence carving expenses, I try to show value to our contributors that their money is being well invested and generating maximum returns for running & expanding the organization.
In ISA terms, we have three buckets to ascertain it. First is what we call a bucket of readiness- enabling activities, here we mobilize grant money with the support of policymakers and by training of trainers, professionals- putting the good projects together. The second bucket is risk mitigation buckets, in this bringing in various kinds of money to address various kinds of risks we are framing typical investment structures (blending finance instruments, mixing patent capital with private sector equity to have the waterfall of returns, principle, junior tranche & senior tranche). And, the third bucket is investment mobilization, it’s where
we go to the big financers, whether it's MDBs, DFIs, national banks, private banks, or institutional investors, and ensure we have a pool of sound projects with potential stable returns.
How do you keep yourself updated with the market trends and what's happening in the country or globally?
As we are a network organization in Solar space, we closely monitor three trends- trends on technology, market, and investment. In a sense, if you piece apart the whole solar market from upstream technology down to investments, we have created different networks of people who are engaged with us. For the solar technology front, we have built a network with the manufacturers of these technologies, and the technologist of these solar applications(whether these are universities or manufacturers or VC funds looking at upstream or D investments).
And, for updating on the solar market trend, we use various market terminals like BloombergNEF and also access the economics intelligence unit databases to see what are the underlying economic parameters in our member countries. Lastly, on the solar investment side, we are associated with MDBs, DFIs, private sector and institution investors. We conduct, very regular and round tables interactions with these people.
Our purpose is to keep abreast of the latest occurances, hence, we also instill it in our monthly and quarterly updates to our member countries. We also are and will be publishing three flagship reports (on global solar technology, global solar market, and global solar investment) that's what our new director general Dr. Ajay Mathur has pushed us to do. Split into quarters, these reports talk about what has changed in one year. Being a 95 member country, (soon we will have one 193), analysis to get a handle on what's going on in our Green Technology Solar Space-regionally, and then globally it requires a massive real time collection of data, it's review and analysis, hence we are also trying to integrate AI for it.
How do you manage to balance between your personal and professional life? I have two small kids- a son(eight yrs) & my daughter(four yrs). Since, COVID-19 it’s been a little hassle- our home vis-a-vis our office. But, what I at least try to do as a family is to have our meals (lunch & dinner) together. I also have a bed story time with my kids. Also, most importantly, me & my wife- we try to not miss our kids' school activities(be it plays/ competitions). Personally, I also play a bit of golf over the weekends, it keeps me a little away from even home & have my own quality time. Thus, these are the things I have been to work through my personal & professional work life.
Jagjeet Singh Sareen, Director-Finance & Investments, International Solar Alliance
A result-oriented leader with a strong passion for Geoeconomics & Global finance, Jagjeet is extensively focused on building & bolstering the Green Finance & Investments at the ISA.
How do you keep yourself updated with the market trends and what's happening in the country or globally?
As we are a network organization in Solar space, we closely monitor three trends- trends on technology, market, and investment. In a sense, if you piece apart the whole solar market from upstream technology down to investments, we have created different networks of people who are engaged with us. For the solar technology front, we have built a network with the manufacturers of these technologies, and the technologist of these solar applications(whether these are universities or manufacturers or VC funds looking at upstream or D investments).
And, for updating on the solar market trend, we use various market terminals like BloombergNEF and also access the economics intelligence unit databases to see what are the underlying economic parameters in our member countries. Lastly, on the solar investment side, we are associated with MDBs, DFIs, private sector and institution investors. We conduct, very regular and round tables interactions with these people.
Our purpose is to keep abreast of the latest occurances, hence, we also instill it in our monthly and quarterly updates to our member countries. We also are and will be publishing three flagship reports (on global solar technology, global solar market, and global solar investment) that's what our new director general Dr. Ajay Mathur has pushed us to do. Split into quarters, these reports talk about what has changed in one year. Being a 95 member country, (soon we will have one 193), analysis to get a handle on what's going on in our Green Technology Solar Space-regionally, and then globally it requires a massive real time collection of data, it's review and analysis, hence we are also trying to integrate AI for it.
How do you manage to balance between your personal and professional life? I have two small kids- a son(eight yrs) & my daughter(four yrs). Since, COVID-19 it’s been a little hassle- our home vis-a-vis our office. But, what I at least try to do as a family is to have our meals (lunch & dinner) together. I also have a bed story time with my kids. Also, most importantly, me & my wife- we try to not miss our kids' school activities(be it plays/ competitions). Personally, I also play a bit of golf over the weekends, it keeps me a little away from even home & have my own quality time. Thus, these are the things I have been to work through my personal & professional work life.
Jagjeet Singh Sareen, Director-Finance & Investments, International Solar Alliance
A result-oriented leader with a strong passion for Geoeconomics & Global finance, Jagjeet is extensively focused on building & bolstering the Green Finance & Investments at the ISA.