Nikhil Parate, Head of Energy & Sustainability, India, Colt Data Centre Services
Nikhil Parate is the head of energy and sustainability, India, at Colt Data Centre Services. He has over two decades of experience across power and energy roles. He began his career as a power engineer at BILT, before taking on roles at Jindal Power Limited and becoming lead engineer at GE Group/Alstom Projects India. He then moved into power plant operations as deputy manager at India Bulls Power Limited, before taking on a mechanical project manager role at the Abhijeet Group. He spent eight years as deputy general manager at Nidar Utilities Panvel LLP, deepening his expertise in energy and utilities management, before joining Colt Data Centre Services in March 2021.
His responsibilities involve leading energy and sustainability for Colt Data Centre Services in India, developing and executing energy strategies across the company’s facilities with a focus on improving efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and advancing renewable energy and energy storage solutions. Parate works closely with operations and technical teams to ensure that the energy strategy keeps pace with growing capacity demands, particularly as AI-driven workloads continue to increase power requirements, while also monitoring and reporting sustainability performance to ensure facilities align with regulatory requirements and the company’s broader environmental commitments.
He expects energy strategy to become one of the defining differentiators for data centre operators over the next few years, with AI workloads continuing to drive higher power consumption and greater adoption of renewable energy sourcing, on-site generation and battery storage solutions. What excites him most is the opportunity to directly shape how data centres approach energy at a time when those decisions carry significant implications for both business performance and environmental sustainability. “Every efficiency improvement and renewable energy initiative I work on can have a measurable impact on how sustainably a facility grows and operates,” he says.
Parate counts his grounding in power and energy engineering, built over two decades across power plants, utilities and now data centres, as one of his key strengths. He describes his management style as hands-on but empowering.
He holds a postgraduate degree in power plant engineering from the National Power Training Institute, Nagpur, and has pursued an executive MBA from NMIMS, Navi Mumbai.
In his spare time, he enjoys playing cricket, listening to music and going to the gym. His family includes his parents, and his wife and their two children.