The Hardeep Puri Interview: What the Minister Raised, and Didn't Explain

Minister Puri sat down for an interview about mileage, engine damage, and consumer choice. That's the conversation everyone else had. We watched it a second time — and one sentence, said in passing, in the middle of a completely different point, stopped us.

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He raised it mid-answer, making a point about consumer choice, then waved it off in the same breath.

That's what caught our attention. For months, our research has tracked India's ethanol program moving in exactly the direction he described in the US: a shift toward maize, a protected feedstock economy, and — as it turns out — a live trade relationship with the very country he was describing.

And here's something worth putting on the record plainly: the figures on this don't agree with each other. S&P Global's principal corn analyst put India's US corn purchases at roughly 200,000 tonnes a year. Separately, official trade data — cited across multiple independent sources — puts actual US-origin corn imports at a few thousand tonnes for the same period. We could not reconcile these two figures ourselves. We are asking the Ministry to clarify which is accurate.

Maize was not used in India's ethanol program before ESY 2021–22. By ESY 2025–26, its reported share ranges from 35% (Minister Puri's own on-record figure) to a figure described elsewhere as "nearly 50%." Two different sources, two different numbers — and they don't even agree on which feedstock is bigger. Puri himself says B-heavy molasses (46%) is still ahead of maize (35%). A separate industry figure puts maize close to 50%. So we're not claiming maize is now India's biggest feedstock, or a majority — we can't say that for certain from what's public. What we can say for certain: maize went from zero to a large, fast-growing share in five years.

Petron Scientech Inc, based in Princeton, New Jersey, holds two separate technologies. One: a patent bought from DuPont in 2019 that can turn DDGS back into ethanol. Two: a different process that turns ethanol into ethylene, a chemical used to make plastic. In August 2024, GAIL — a company 51.92% owned by the Indian government — signed a non-binding agreement with Petron for the second technology, the ethanol-to-ethylene one. Not the DDGS one. We have found no public document connecting Petron's DDGS technology to this GAIL deal, and we are not saying one exists. We're pointing out that the same company holds both technologies, at the same time India opened its doors to DDGS imports — and nobody has publicly ruled a connection out either. If an explanation already exists, we'd genuinely like to see it, and we'll link to it. One more thing: two years after this deal was announced, there's still no public sign it has moved past the initial agreement — no finished feasibility study, no investment approval, no company actually formed.

"India committing to purchase over $500 billion in American goods is a win for corn farmers... India's growing population and economy are creating increased demand for Iowa-grown corn, ethanol and dried distillers' grains."