Public tenders are how a meaningful share of Indian charging capacity gets deployed. They offer sites, sometimes land, occasionally capital support, and a counterparty that pays. They also carry obligations that a private site agreement never would, and the obligations are where bids go wrong.
Six clauses to find first
| Clause | What to check |
|---|---|
| Uptime obligation | The percentage, the measurement method, and the exclusions |
| Penalty structure | What non-performance costs, and whether it is capped |
| Reporting | Format, frequency, and whether it can be produced automatically |
| Tariff control | Whether you set the retail price or the authority does |
| Term and exit | Duration, renewal, and who owns the assets at the end |
| Site readiness | Who provides the connection, and by when |
The uptime clause is the one that determines whether the contract is profitable. A ninety-five percent availability obligation with no exclusion for grid outages, host-caused unavailability or scheduled maintenance is an obligation you cannot meet, because a large share of downtime on a public site is not within your control.
Reporting is a systems requirement
Public contracts typically require periodic reporting on sessions, energy delivered, availability and downtime incidents, often in a prescribed format. Producing that manually across a hundred connectors is a full-time job. Confirm before bidding that your platform can generate the required fields — particularly availability by connector over a date range, which is the one most systems cannot produce.
The site readiness question
Many tenders award sites where the electrical connection does not yet exist. Read carefully whose obligation it is to obtain it and what happens to the timeline — and to your penalties — if it is delayed. An operator penalised for non-availability at a site that has no power yet is a situation that has actually occurred.
When to decline
Uncapped penalties, an uptime obligation with no exclusions, or a mandated retail price below your landed cost. Any one of the three makes the contract a liability regardless of the volume it brings, and volume at a loss is the most expensive kind of growth available.