NASSCOM CoE-IoT & AI organized ‘Voice of Manufacturing Edition 6 – Digital Transformation in Manufacturing Value Chain’ to bring out the larger economic perspective of the manufacturing industry linked with Digital India Mission. The manufacturing leaders talked about digital maturity, viability, and ability to adopt digital offerings across their value chain bringing tangible impacts or return on investment (RoI). Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India Org, delivered a keynote address on ‘Taking a leap into next normal in Industry & Innovation’.
“We are at an inflection point in history as we are growing and experiencing an unprecedented change in history. The pace and scale of the changes have been stupendous. Manufacturing is subset of everything around it. When lockdown was announced we didn’t have PPE suits and we were looking at other countries, but by July we were exporting PPEs and ventilators. Most profound impact of digitization has been on governance,” said Bagla.
Talking about movement from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0, Dr. Ajai Garg, Senior Director, MeitY, “The digitalization is riding other sectors now whether agritech or automobile. Pre-COVID era was when manufacturing was based out of geography which created economic triangle for the world, in the post-COVID era it is changing from such monopoly regime to a concept of trusted global supply chain partners. Data security and other security aspects have become a priority. The Government has been pro-active and PLI scheme came in toughest times of lockdown. Many policy changes were adopted to bringing in ease of doing business. Second change is in innovation; the world is looking at solutions which are robust and taking care of other 6 billion people of the world. India has an advantage as it has 50,000 startups. India through its public digital platform is driving a low-cost inclusive digitalisation model that will improve productivity of all key economic centers.”
Talking of techno-domain outlook of Indian industry, MP Dubey, Joint Director, STPI (AP), said, “Upskilling should be done in local languages, we have talked with colleges to give courses on technology in local languages.”
The second session was on ‘Industry digital adoption: Supply chain & logistics’, which saw participation of Sreenivasan Balasubramaniam, CEO, IAMPL; Vijay Kalra, Head – Mahindra Institute of Quality & Chairman – Central Safety Council, Mahindra & Mahindra; Nandkumar Kulkarni, Director – Manufacturing, Mondelez India; Mohit Jauhari, Head – SCM, Shriram Pistons & Rings; Sunil Mehta, General Manager—Automotive Business, Factory Automation & Industrial Division, Mitsubishi Electric India; and Hima Parvataneni, CEO, Navata Supply Chain Solutions.
Vijay Kalra, Head – Mahindra Institute of Quality & Chairman – Central Safety Council, Mahindra & Mahindra, delved on the readiness of the country for technology adoption, and said, “Auto has competition from around the world as everyone wanted to be India. If we have to be there in this environment then speed is very important.”
About NASSCOM Center of Excellence IoT& AI
The NASSCOM Center of Excellence is the largest collaborative innovation platform in the emerging technologies of IoT, Analytics, AI/ML, AR/VR and Robotics for Digital Transformation. It is part of the Digital India Initiative to jumpstart and drive the emerging technologies ecosystem in India, by leveraging India’s IT strengths and assist the country attain a leadership role in the convergent area of hardware and software.
The main objective of the CoE is to help Indian Deep-Tech Startups& Companies leverage cutting edge technologies to build market-ready products. Through the Startups Program, CoE aims to build industry capable talent in an entrepreneurial ecosystem by facilitating Incubation, Funding, Acceleration, Industry Connect and Mentoring.
NASSCOM CoE was setup in July 2016 as part of the Digital India initiative of MeitY, with the objective of aiding innovative start-ups in the emerging technologies. NASSCOM CoE-IoT has centers in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Gandhinagar and Vizag.