Preeti Bajaj

Preeti Bajaj is a spectacular businesswoman who has carved a unique identity for herself through her remarkable leadership skills and exceptional vision in transforming the market concerning solar technology. With over two decades of experience in the corporate world, she has earned a reputation as a trailblazer, breaking down barriers and achieving success in industries traditionally dominated by men. Her tenacity, perseverance, determination, and relentless drive to succeed against all odds make her a fantastic and inspiring business leader. Preeti’s trajectory to the top is a capsule of motivation for anyone who aspires to achieve great things in their career.

The Brief

Being MD and CEO of Luminous Power Technologies, Preeti has been garnering global applause for reshaping the face of the energy solutions segment in Indian lands. Her establishment was conceived in 1988 and since then, there has been no turning back. In over 33 years of its successful journey, Luminous has managed to be India’s most trusted power backup, and residential solar space. The brand philosophy is to devise solutions that are sustainable and energy-efficient to make lives comfortable and full of happiness.

Over the years, Preeti established a lucrative career at the intersection of technology and transformation. She has been highly active for over two decades in the Australian and Asian business environments which brought her extensive expertise to create as well as execute strategies to set the pace for sustainable growth across a range of enterprises (multinationals, ASX-listed corporates, and startups).

The Impetus

While in Australia, the dynamics of solar were accelerating, leading to her headhunting to join Schneider Electric as the Vice President of Strategy and Transformation in 2015, and that is what pushed her to enter this sector. She was fortunate enough to come close to solar technology in a country that was deploying it at scale and speed at the time. Australia has 25% of its homes already leveraged with solar solutions. Rooftop solar was a fast-growing market at the time, and Schneider Electric, the parent company of Luminous Power Technologies, was providing inverter solutions to that market. Preeti happened to work closely with some utilities there, and they embarked on a journey to solve the problem of energy access and energy savings for home consumers. They studied a lot of customers and their associated pain points, which included finding energy bills confusing, understanding solar and its payback difficult, and the installation experience somewhat lacking, wanting it to be a delightful experience.

Sponsored and supported by Schneider Electric Ventures, Preeti established a venture called Clipsal. Solar and Clipsal are homegrown, well-established brands in Australia, similar to Luminous. She took on the task of being the CEO of the first-ever incubated venture in the group, which set up a home energy services company with the explicit purpose of driving energy savings, using connected technologies and solar into the hands of the consumer through the development of an app called Clipsal Cortex. After doing this for a few years, she moved on to her current position at Luminous Power Technologies. In a nutshell, her journey as a C-suite executive began around eight years ago and has earned recognition for her stellar performance. 

The Flagship Portfolio

Luminous is a purposeful and concise energy storage and solutions company that focuses on addressing the pain points of consumers in two distinct areas. The first area concerns consumers who require power backup solutions to ensure their appliances have the necessary power when needed. Luminous is proud to offer inverters and batteries that meet this need. The second area is solar solutions for those who want to run all their appliances with solar energy at an affordable price. Luminous provides full solar power generating systems ranging from sub-1 KVA to ten kilowatts. The third aspect is the technology-led component, where Luminous aims to provide consumers with digital and data capabilities for power backup solutions, including inverters from sub-one to ten KVA and beyond. Additionally, Luminous seeks to enable customers to access information about their inverter and power backup needs as customers are particularly interested in understanding whether their power plant generates sufficient power to offset their electricity costs. Today, the venture has carved an etch for itself in Indian as well as international markets. 

Breaking The Glass Ceiling 

Preeti Bajaj reflects on her journey as a woman entrepreneur, acknowledging that there were challenges along the way. However, she views these challenges as opportunities to increase her resilience quotient, rather than obstacles to her success. She believes that a career is a combination of ambition, asking, and action, and that having ambition means asking for challenges and complex problems to solve. The woman tycoon started her career in software sales, where she encountered gender bias, with people assuming that she was there to bring coffee instead of being a part of the team. Despite this, she remained positive and demonstrated her commitment to her work, ultimately transforming mindsets along the way. Preeti emphasizes the importance of finding a community of mentors and aspirational people who share similar goals and values to scale in one’s journey to higher aloft. She was fortunate enough to have these people in her life, which helped her to build her career and deliver impact across the masses globally.

Thoughts On Leadership

Throughout the world, leaders share different perspectives on leadership based on their personal experiences, values, and beliefs. In Preeti’s opinion, leadership is a gender-neutral activity, and in this context, she believes that there are three crucial skills that one must possess. Firstly, critical thinking is essential to peacefully and logically work through complex problems, regardless of whether it’s within your domain area of expertise or not. Secondly, learning agility is crucial in quickly adapting and learning new things to solve complex problems. This skill complements critical thinking, making it even more effective. Finally, resilience is paramount when it comes to dealing with fast-paced change and uncertainty. Preeti believes that as leaders, we have the opportunity to change the perception of volatility to velocity, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to co-creation, and ambiguity to adaptability.

Whom Does She Look Up To For Inspiration?

Preeti shares that she doesn’t have just one particular role model, but rather an ecosystem of people she wants to learn from. Her father had a big influence on her, as she grew up around entrepreneurs who were driving heavy engineering in the family business of wood packaging, steel fabrication, and overhead crane manufacturing in India. She also had many mentors in different parts of her life, including men and women in her university who taught her the Australian way as she adapted to a new culture. When she formed her first company with John Nottingham and Mike Dennehy, they taught her a lot about technology and how to look at a technology business. Linda Yates at Mach 49 in Silicon Valley taught her how to build a unicorn from within. Preeti believes that inspiration and learning are often around us, and we don’t need to look for an amazing role model. She looks up to traditional role models like Nelson Mandela, Jack Welch, Jeff Bezos, Hillary Clinton, and Indira Gandhi, observing their little nuggets of wisdom and leadership style that stick with her over time.

The Laurels

“Our core focus on consumer advocacy and consumer recollection has propelled us to the position we hold today. I’m very grateful to all our customers for their loyalty and their trust in luminous and we promise to keep up with it always,” Preeti shared the secret to the marvels attained by her as well as Luminous. 

Preeti has had a thriving career, starting with her studies in Australia where she earned an MBA and a Master of Applied Finance. In 2011, the ‘woman CEO’ was awarded the National Young Executive of the Year Australian Financial Review Award, becoming one of the few Indians to receive this recognition. Her achievement was widely covered in the news, making her feel fortunate and excited. Another noteworthy recognition came in 2017 when the chief executive woman chose Preeti for the Authentic Leadership Program, sending her to Harvard Business School to learn from other amazing leaders. She is proud to be spearheading the Luminous brand which has received numerous accolades. One of her personal favourites is being the brand ambassador, a recognition that highlights the brand’s value and reputation.

Luminous has received numerous accolades for its commitment to sustainability and consumer satisfaction and has emerged as a super brand in the consumer industry. Preeti, the driving force behind the company, is grateful to its loyal customers for their trust and support. The company’s recent feat as a winner in the India Green Manufacturing Awards is a testament to its focus on sustainability, with the inverter and battery plant winning gold among its peers. Luminous also received applause from the government for its efforts in water conservation in one of its factories in Hosur, aligning with the goal of decarbonizing India. Since 2012, Luminous has been a constant consumer superbrand, a significant achievement for any company in the industry. The team at Luminous remains committed to building on these successes and continuing to provide exceptional products and services to their customers.

The Nuggets Of Wisdom Shared By The CEO

“I would say that we need to be bold to build the future that is right here for us to build. We need to move from business managers to business builders. And we need to do that with a bunch of people we can have a lot of fun with. So I would say it’s a B cube if you like. And it’s all the world that will belong to those who can, I suppose, integrate digitization technology with humanity. So when we build the products of the future, it is incumbent upon us as business leaders to think about the world in that context.”