Billion-dollar baby

For close to 36 years, Sreenivas Ratnam wore the iconic white uniform of the Indian Navy, working his way through a variety of roles that instilled in him a broad understanding of every aspect of the military organization. But he also held a profound desire to protect the interests of his nation. Now, as CEO of Bondada Group, he is harnessing both to take the Indian infrastructure company to the next level.

“The Navy gives you a plethora of opportunities to apply yourself in different domains,” he tells The CEO Magazine. “One day, you are in a training room where they are grooming tomorrow’s leaders, not just in the technology domain but also in the realm of military leadership; the next day you are directing a complex war ship modernization project on the dock floor; the next day you are negotiating a multibillion-dollar acquisition-cum-technology transfer deal for a critical platform and technologies.

“I don’t think any other career or any other profession gives you this wide-ranging exposure. At the end of around 35 years, I was quite well-rounded in every facet that a CEO has to apply in the corporate world.”

Armed with this wealth of experience, Ratnam joined Hyderabad-based Bondada Group in mid-2025 as it forged ahead on a new path of diversification.

Founded in 2012, telecommunications had long been its flagship vertical. But a few years ago, it expanded into solar – a sector where it is now a formidable competitor.

“Today, we stand at a place where we are able to foresee tomorrow’s problems and then give feedback to the policymakers,” Ratnam explains.

“That is the depth to which the company has gone into a segment that we entered just six or seven months ago. The request for proposals issued by us have now actually become standard templates for the industry.”

This impact, generated in such a short time, is a sign of the company’s agility, he adds.

Growth trajectory

The past four years have seen Bondada Group grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 100 percent – an achievement Ratnam puts down to fruitful partnerships with companies like Mahati, as well as its commitment to optimizing its engineering and operational efficiency to be competitive, simultaneously safeguarding its ethos of quality and timely deliveries.

“It’s also important to have the flexibility and the ability to scale up and again, scale down,” he points out. “We are also expanding and diversifying. We recently diversified into the area of battery energy storage systems (BESS).

“You’ve got to keep up with the latest technology. And then you also need to look at what makes the country self-reliant – such as new technologies – so the country retains this strategic autonomy, and then focus on those areas.”

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“Bondada’s engineering team knows exactly what they need and their repeat orders are the strongest endorsement of our partnership. Over the years, we have proudly supplied power transformers, including a 120-megavolt-ampere-unit. We value this long-standing relationship and look forward to supporting Bondada’s growth with reliable, high-performance solutions.” – Sujay Shah, Director, Mahati Industries

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Aligning the company’s work with the long-term goals for the country is crucial for Bondada Group, according to Ratnam, with recent events in Ukraine and West Asia highlighting the importance of strategic autonomy.

“It’s not just in the defense domain; you need that autonomy in every domain,” he insists. “I think every company should orient itself toward how it can contribute to realizing the national vision, while pursuing its business objectives.

“Energy security is something that is absolutely essential. So while working on the lithium-ion-based BESS projects, we are also looking at exploring new technologies where we can get in and then contribute toward the nation’s autonomy in the energy sector.”

Big business

When it comes to setting goals, for Bondada Group it’s a case of go big or go home. The company’s Vision 2030 document sets out the ambitious target of becoming a billion-dollar company. And if that wasn’t a challenge enough, it has also undertaken to boost its renewable energy verticals to 25 gigawatts – 16 in solar and nine in BESS.

“We’ve also prepared a road map to get into advanced manufacturing facilities, which actually contributes to the government’s vision of India making for the world,” Ratnam says.

At the moment, the ratio of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects to product manufacturing is around 90:10 in terms of revenue, he explains.

“We plan to slightly alter this combination to 70:30, bringing our revenue from the EPC segment to 70 and then manufacturing to 30,” he reveals.

In order to do this, Bondada Group will shift its focus from generic, low technically intensive products to high technically intensive and intellectual property-based products.

“So we’ll look at manufacturing a few things that are exclusive or that not many others are manufacturing,” Ratnam says. “That means we are adding to the intellectual capital of the country.”

Strategic autonomy

With Bondada Group’s leadership team being passionate about making things in India, products that may have once been predominantly sourced from China are now being produced locally, like unplasticized polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) profiles and windows.

Question marks have also been raised over the need for joint ventures with European companies to manufacture these profiles in India.

“Even before I came in, the company was asking why we couldn’t just manufacture by ourselves with Indian raw materials, making a product that conforms to every possible standard in the world, not just India, and then make it here, in this country,” Ratnam says.

Bondada Group’s Eco Build vertical does exactly that, rolling out uPVC products that are entirely Indian, right down to the raw materials, with no foreign collaboration.

Solar-powered LED lamps are another area the company is dabbling in but, as Ratnam points out, there is no shortage of players in this space.

“These products are very general-purpose and generic products,” he says. “The company got into it, basically, because it believes in an energy-efficient product.

“Being driven by the need for intellectual property and high technology-centric products, it calls for a quantum leap in the technology threshold of the company. We need to acquire and then innovate those products and then get into manufacturing them.

“With the vision of the company’s leadership and the free hand that they give to me and the trust the company places on its own team, I’m sure in the next two years we will make it a reality.”