“Data centers will become one of the major growth drivers”: Thermax CEO's big bet on data centers

In an exclusive NDTV Profit interview, Thermax CEO Ashish Bhandari reportedly expressed optimism about growth despite geopolitical challenges, citing an order backlog exceeding 1 ten-thousand and 4,000 crore, and identified data centers as the biggest growth driver. He explains that the intelligent boiler, launched to mark the company's 60th anniversary, makes decisions and controls operations on its own, improving efficiency by up to 10% compared with manual operation. Described as a product among the world's first of its kind, it is driving long-term margin improvement in the industrial products segment, which has grown for 5 consecutive years. He provides quarterly revenue guidance exceeding 3,000 crore and expresses confidence in converting the backlog into revenue based on its quality, despite geopolitically driven shipping and construction disruptions. He says data centers will become one of the largest segments over the next 2~3 years. Starting with a 400 crore boiler order in the United States, he emphasizes a product range suited to the US market, where power facilities and data centers are co-located, and a substantial pipeline, explaining the benefits for power, cooling, and water treatment businesses at home and abroad. He says bio-CNG was not commercially viable at 78~79 rupees, but new policy prices of 105·110 rupees and state government incentives have changed its economics, bringing it into a major growth phase. The company is pursuing partnerships with solutions for plants with daily capacities of 15 tonnes or more. He reportedly says the company is expanding its portfolio for the future through India's 80GW thermal power capacity expansion, new energy businesses such as CBG, hydrogen, and advanced biofuels, and energy-transition partnerships. All directional outlooks are the speaker's conditional assessments, not definitive predictions of short-term prices.