Dr. Mukul Saxena, President & Chief Technology Officer, Havells India Ltd., presents the steps the company has undertaken to promote innovations, the industry 4.0 initiatives, and further roadmap.
“During the financial year 2021-22, our R&D spending stood at INR 110.26 crores. The investment continued to be focused on capacity and capability building at our three core R&D centres at Noida and Bengaluru.”
Wire & Cable India: What have you been doing to foster innovation and R&D at your workplace?
Mukul Saxena: As a leading FMEG company, we manage a large product portfolio across both B2B and B2C domains at Havells India Ltd. The key to maintaining our competitive edge is strengthening our R&D capabilities. We continue to make very good progress on the roadmap laid down by us, a few years ago, for our R&D transformation. During the financial year 2021-22, our R&D spending stood at INR 110.26 crore. The investment continued to be focused on capacity and capability building at our three core R&D centres at Noida and Bengaluru. The advanced R&D center at Noida continues to play a critical role in ensuring the Havells’ brand promise of quality and customer value proposition.
As the world is coming out of the pandemic, our strong resolve in R&D has helped to navigate many challenges like material supply disruptions, cost escalations, and changes in customer preferences. The wealth of knowledge and infrastructures created by us over these couple of years will stay with us and continue to be a source of competitive advantage.
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WCI: What is your technology and business roadmap for the coming times?
MS: The FMEG industry has enormous growth potential, given the improvement in electricity availability and demand for comfort, convenience, and hygiene. This will exhilarate the need for a technologically-advanced overall product portfolio. Additionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving a digital wave in home automation, making it imperative for brands to offer innovative solutions that will help customers in realising their smart home aspirations. Today, the consumer is far more aware and aspirational. Rising internet penetration has further accelerated the adoption of smart solutions.
We are at the cusp of innovation when it comes to our consumer products. We are transcending traditional product boundaries to offer our customers new functionalities, improved reliability, better utilisation and enhanced capabilities. We achieved a significant milestone with the Havells in-house IoT and AI Platform. It is equipped with Connectivity and Control Hardware, Product Cloud, Havells Sync Unified App, and Voice Control with AI/ ML capabilities.
WCI: Kindly elaborate on some of the Industry 4.0 initiatives taken by your company.
MS: At Havells, we commissioned the most advanced robotic manufacturing plant in Ghiloth, Rajasthan, in line with the ‘Make in India’ vision. This is a washing machine manufacturing plant with the capacity to produce 3 lakh units per annum. A manufacturing Execution System (MES) has been installed to monitor the production cycle in real-time, improving operations and saving time.
The greenfield plant will significantly strengthen our production capacity. As part of Industry 4.0, the embedded systems, factories and operators are connected over the IoT to work together in a synchronised manner, within an integrated digital and physical environment. The use of robots, backed with AI, are driving precision and quality, helping us make quality Indian products for the global market.
The Industry 4.0 capability and the MES facility reduce reliance on manual monitoring and supervision, making all information about production data and loss-time, among others, available remotely in a paperless environment.
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WCI: Please take us through some of the technology-driven products manufactured by your company.
MS: This year, we introduced a retrofit module range, enabling our customers to convert conventional switches into smart ones, by connecting over Wi-Fi. We are creating a new range of switches, built with smart communication features and soft-touch operations, marking a new benchmark of increased connectivity and ease of operations in the functioning of switches.
Under our appliances range, we built India’s first ceiling fan with an integrated air purifier, upgraded with the 5-star BEE-rated BLDC motor technology. Other key smart products launched this year include Monza-i water heater and Signia smart switches and many more are planned for the coming year. Through our Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, we are going beyond and deeper into making homes smarter and powering a holistic digital experience.
