HBL Power: Signs of change

I downloaded the latest list of all RDSO approved vendors for KAVACH. I was surprised to see that all vendors, including Medha, HBL and Kernex, are listed as “developmental” vendors and not “approved” vendors.

Among developmental vendors there are 3 different levels of approval:

1. Development Vendor with supply capacity limit – Medha, HBL and Kernex
2. Development Vendor for field trials only – GG Tronics and Quadrant
3. Development Vendor for prototype only – 7 companies. See the table below.

The actual PDF downloaded from IREPS website is attached.
KAVACH Vendor Directory 07-Sep-2024.pdf (2.6 MB). I have extracted and distilled the information in the table below.

Approval Has Capacity Limits

So as you can see, not only are there 3 different levels of approval, the final approval also has a limit on capacity. Apparently RDSO also assesses supply capacity per annum. In one of the interviews the Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnav also talked about awarding contracts based on manufacturing capacity. So now it all makes sense.

I am not sure how long does the process from field trial to final approval take. GG Tronics and Quadrant received the go ahead for field trials on 29th May 2024. As of today they have approval only for 5 sets of KAVACH (which means KAVACH for 5 station side equipments, 5 trackside and 5 onboard locomotives). So it appears to me that these 2 companies are not competing in the currently released tenders. The other 7 companies – big names like BEL, BHEL, Siemens etc. are not even eligible. I may be wrong, someone needs to cross check.

KAVACH Will Keep on Evolving

Also, as I mentioned before, everyone is a “developmental” vendor now. No one is an “approved” vendor yet. This means the KAVACH systems will undergo further changes. Currently it is at version 4.0 (previous was version 3.2). So it looks like the whoever is on the latest version will always have an advantage as far as eligibility for tenders is concerned. What I mean to say is – lets say a company has approval for ver 3.2 and wants to go for ver 4.0, then there will be some time lag due to RDSO’s testing and evaluation process. The tenders released are always for the latest version and if a new tender arrives before the company has received the approval for the latest version then they will not be eligible for the tender.

What would be the reason behind RailTel signing the “exclusive” MoU with Quadrant? I understand the MoU part, but not the “exclusive” part. Quadrant has a lot to gain out of an exclusive tie up with RailTel, but I am not sure if RailTel has. Logically speaking RailTel should be open to working with any RDSO approved KAVACH vendor. Anyways a MoU is not a binding legal agreement, so I would not read too much into it. The timing is also suspicious, just 1 month before they filed the DHRP.