India city gas distribution: measure activated demand, not just connections

A connected meter is not the same observation as an active bill

PNGRB’s 31 March 2026 snapshot reports 1.69 crore domestic PNG connections and 1.07 crore billed connections. The resulting ratio is roughly 63%, calculated from rounded values. It is a useful activation question, but it is not enough to label the remaining connections as permanently inactive, disconnected or commercially worthless. Reporting periods, billing cycles and the meaning of a billed connection require validation before a causal conclusion is drawn. [S1]

The distinction matters because infrastructure deployment and customer usage have different cost and revenue profiles. A business can incur network and connection expenditure before the customer establishes regular consumption. A strong connection-addition headline can therefore coexist with a slower revenue ramp. The analytical task is to measure the progression from authorised territory to commissioned network, connected customer, first use, recurring billing and sustained volume. Each step needs its own date and definition.

Use the MIS structure to ask the right questions

The October 2025 MIS provides a dated example:15,896,515 domestic connections and 10,046,440 billed connections. Their ratio is approximately 63.2%. Do not interpret its small difference from the rounded March 2026 ratio as a precise performance trend; the snapshots differ in date and rounding, and entity-level changes need reconciliation. Use comparable granular fields if the business decision depends on the direction of activation. [S5]

Segment the demand before making a rollout forecast

A geographical area can contain domestic, commercial, industrial and transport demand with very different load profiles. The IEA’s 2025 outlook gives CGD a prominent role in its growth thesis, but that category-level expectation is not a forecast for every authorised area. A local screen needs the customer mix, alternative-fuel economics, network availability and acquisition cost. An industrial customer may add significant volume while a large number of household meters adds a different commercial and service obligation. [S2]

For domestic PNG, analyse regular consumption and collection rather than counting the first connection as a completed customer journey. For CNG, measure station throughput, operating hours, access, fleet density and the response to competing fuels. For industrial gas, test delivered useful-energy cost and supply reliability. The same customer-growth assumption should not be assigned to all three segments merely because they sit inside one CGD authorisation.

A data model for selecting the next investment

Cohort analysis is especially valuable. Compare customers or stations added in the same period and allow for their ramp-up, rather than interpreting a young asset as a permanently poor performer. Keep commissioning dates and first-billing dates separate. If a region’s count grows while its mature cohort remains stable, the apparent reduction in average throughput may reflect the new denominator rather than deterioration at existing sites.

Where the next unit of intelligence creates value

For a developer, the research question is which bottleneck prevents existing infrastructure from earning: customer economics, physical access, activation, reliability or collection. For a gas supplier, it is which loads remain robust at different delivered prices. For an industrial customer, it is whether the proposed connection produces a competitive and dependable fuel supply. These questions produce more actionable work than a national map coloured entirely by authorisation status.

Build the forecast from the customer cohort upward and reconcile it to reported totals. Show the volume, tariff and cost assumptions separately, and preserve observed versus modelled fields. A transparent activation model can identify where a commercial intervention may work without pretending that every unbilled connection is an immediate sale. That is a more credible B2B discussion than treating network reach as already-realised demand.

A cohort view can make the activation question more actionable. Group connections by the period in which they became available for use, then track billed activity and consumption over comparable elapsed time. Otherwise an area with many newly built connections may look weaker than a mature area simply because its customers have had less time to adopt the service. Record why a connection is not active where the information is available: network readiness, customer conversion, occupancy, appliance availability or relative fuel cost. The analysis should direct the next field investigation rather than assign a universal reason for non-use. A connection count becomes commercially valuable when it can be linked to activation, repeat consumption and a viable customer proposition.