Coslight India is a subsidiary of Coslight Technology International Group and is a Lithion-Ion and VRLA battery manufacturer with production units in India. The Group has twenty-one subsidiaries including offices in Russia, Germany, UK, Italy, Turkey, the U.S. and Canada.
In this interview, Mr Gupta, VP for Sales and Marketing of Coslight India, discusses the company’s growth and footprint as well as its evolution since the entrance of towercos in the telecom industry.
TowerXchange: Please tell us about Coslight background and foot print in Asia?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Coslight India’s core business activities include manufacturing of Lithium-ion and VRLA batteries as well as system integration for mobile network operators and tower companies in Southeast Asia, EMEA, North and Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.
Coslight India started operation in 2007 in India and has established manufacturing plants in India at Una and IMT Manesar, Gurgaon. Coslight India is technologically and financially supported by Coslight International Group which was established in 1994 and listed at the Hong Kong United Stock Exchange in 1999.
TowerXchange: Which companies are you serving and which products are they demanding?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Coslight India is directly serving leading mobile network operators and tower companies including Vodafone, Bharti Infratel, Indus Towers, Reliance Jio, and Idea Cellular, in addition to its global presence through OEMs and distributor partners. Coslight international customers include China Mobile, China Telecom, STC (Saudi Arabia), Telcel and Vivo, among others.
Lithium-ion enabled energy storage products and solutions are in demand in regions like Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific due to their effectiveness in addressing ground challenges like revenue leakage, high diesel consumption and theft issue at telecom sites. Whereas our VRLA products are usually adopted in North America and Europe.
TowerXchange: Please would you make a comparison between the use case scenarios where lithium-ion delivers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) and where VRLA is the better choice?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Lithium batteries are ideal for cyclic usage in off-grid/unreliable grid sites whereas VRLA batteries are suitable for standby application in locations with a very good power grid. The life cycle of a lithium battery is more than ten times longer than a VRLA battery. Moreover, lithium batteries perform very well even at high temperatures and don’t require air conditioning. All these factors result into high opex savings and carbon footprint reduction due to very low DG runtime.
The economics are very sensitive to environmental conditions, charge-discharge rates, remoteness of installation and even local laws and regulations.
For us, the electrification of rural villages is playing an important role and emerging as a new business opportunity. These villages do require a reliable energy storage system as the cost of running transmission lines is just prohibitive. Renewable systems with energy storage solutions offer an attractive option. Coincidentally, many of the projects under development happen to be in warmer locations, which tip the balance toward lithium-ion.
TowerXchange: How is Coslight addressing environmental issues in the Asian towerco industry?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Coslight India’s Lithium-ion storage products and solutions make it possible to reduce carbon footprints by minimising or completely eliminating the usage of diesel generators at telecom sites. Using these batteries contributes to reducing opex and capex as well as the total cost of ownership.
Coslight India adopts a holistic approach to power provisioning and management solutions based on experiential learning as an integrated service provider. Moreover, our Lithium-ion products and hybrid applications contribute to the effort of telecom players to achieve green targets and covert their sites to eco-friendly solutions.
TowerXchange: How did the entrance of towercos in the region change the way you do business?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Towercos work on the basis of the tenancy model and always seek to achieve scalability. Therefore, they look for solutions that can address space constraint issues, contribute to facilitating tower sharing as well as assuring reliable backup power at telecom sites.
Coslight India has evolved to support towercos’ basic business model and concept by providing advanced energy storage solutions and hybrid applications. We are very committed to provide end-to-end solutions to towercos and open to discuss their specific needs and find the optimal solution for each site.
TowerXchange: What’s the proportion of business from towercos versus operators?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
To date, a considerable proportion of our business comes from telecom operators as they often still retain ownership of capex/opex. Towercos are slowly entering the game and approaching operators with a variety of business models. Depending on the adopted business model, they will or will not seek power solutions and take over this important operational aspect.
TowerXchange: Are you involved in R&D? Which products are you working on?
Manoj Gupta, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Coslight India:
Our advanced offering is made possible thanks to Coslight’s continuous focus on R&D, design innovation, streamlined manufacturing processes, proactive quality management systems as well as our capability to customise and “size-to-suit” our products to meet our clients’ requirements.
Our current offering of Lithium-ion and VRLA products have been designed with high quality standards and meeting all international certifications such as ISO-9000, ISO-14000, DIN and UL.
