CRISIL Ethanol Report: Building India's Roadmap View from Scratch

Ahmar took on the ethanol project at CRISIL with a brief that was deliberately open-ended: the client, a leading Indian bank, wanted to understand ethanol's current position in India and what the road ahead looked like. There was no pre-existing internal framework to build on.

He started by mapping every stakeholder group with a stake in the outcome. He researched the government's policy stance, the position of oil marketing companies, the response of automotive manufacturers, and public sentiment, treating each as a separate lens rather than a single narrative.

To organize the analysis, he applied structured frameworks including PESTEL and MECE to evaluate where ethanol was creating value and where it was creating friction. He also studied how Brazil and the United States had built successful ethanol programs, identifying what India had replicated and where it had fallen short.

One of the most significant findings he surfaced was a shift in ethanol's feedstock mix: in just one year, the primary source had moved from sugar to maize and rice husk. This was consequential because the earlier sugar-based model had drawn heavy criticism given India's domestic sugar consumption. The shift changed the viability picture materially, and it had not been captured in the previous published report.

He also incorporated social media criticism into the analysis, something the prior version had missed entirely, giving the client a fuller picture of public and ecosystem sentiment.

The final report gave the client a neutral, evidence-based view on whether to continue backing ethanol or recalibrate their position. Ahmar's independent conclusion was that ethanol has a significant role to play in India's energy security, but that the government moved faster than the ecosystem could absorb, and that a more sequenced rollout with clearer mandates for automotive manufacturers would have reduced friction across the board.