Balaji M K 2019 Speaker

Off-Grid Lead

USAID & Power Africa’s Nigeria Power Sector Program

Biography

Balaji has over 28 years of experience in the climate change, clean energy and sustainable development both in the corporate and the development sectors. He is currently a Specialist Leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, leading off-grid electrification work under USAID’s Power Africa program in Nigeria. Click link to read more on Power Africa. Prior to this, he served as Chief of Party of a USAID-funded program called Private Finance Advisory Network (PFAN) covering 12 Countries across South and South East Asia. He has worked on other such donor funded projects, including the World Bank and others.

Prior to his work in the development sector, Balaji worked for over 25 years in the corporate sector, including technology, project development, financing and operations. He was the Director and Member of the Investment Committee of a clean energy private equity fund in Asia and managed complete lifecycle of investments from identifying deals, negotiating, structuring, portfolio management, operations and exits. He was overseen investments over US $ 100 million and has reviewed deals worth over US $ 700 million. He has also held several posts on Boards of Directors and has managed companies from C-Level positions, several of them in the biofuels business.

He has a rich experience in developing carbon emission reduction projects under the UNFCCC framework and has worked across several technologies. He also led the country operations in Thailand for Thermax Limited, a leading global energy and environment engineering company and started up their operations.

Balaji holds an MBA in International Business from Webster University, USA and holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India. He also has a Certificate in Solar Technologies from the Renewables Academy, Berlin and a Certificate in Blockchain Technologies- Business Innovation and Applications from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.