Mr. Bhushan Sawhney, Executive President & Chief Business Officer (Cables), Polycab India Ltd., takes us through the major technological innovations, future roadmap, and initiatives to promote Industry 4.0.
“Polycab’s advanced wire & cable technology, computerised product design and stringent quality control help to develop highly engineered products that give excellent features beyond the standards.”
Wire & Cable India: Please take us through the technology as well as the quality development or upgradations that recently took place at Polycab India Ltd.
Bhushan Sawhney: Polycab India manufactures best-in-class wires and cables using cutting-edge technologies.
All units are equipped with advanced machinery and testing equipment as per national and international standards.
We have established a robust backward integration to ensure the control of product quality, supply chain, and reduction in operational costs.
Polycab’s advanced wire & cable technology, computerised product design, and stringent quality control help to develop highly engineered products that give excellent features beyond the standards.
WCI: What have you been doing to foster innovation and R&D at your workplace?
BS: At Polycab, we are constantly gathering insights in new application areas and supporting them by developing new innovative products required to satisfy the underserved needs of our customers. R&D remains one of our key strengths which enables us to achieve product differentiation and offer a unique value proposition to our customers, distributors, dealers as well as institutional customers.
Our in-house R&D centre, located at Halol, Gujarat, is certified by the Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR, Government of India), and is continuously working on new product development in the wires & cables space. A large team of R&D and technical professionals support the manufacturing function through their expertise in the research process, design, performance and project management, and cater to evolving market requirements such as fire-retardant, fire survival, low smoke and multi-chemical resistant compounds. We also collaborate with various external technology consultants to develop many first-to-market technologies.
Polycab India Ltd. is the first company in India to receive Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) test certification on ISO 16942 cables for electric vehicles (EV) applications.
Watch: Wire & Cable Industry Year Review
WCI: What is your technology and business roadmap for the coming times?
BS: Polycab has always been at the forefront of leveraging technology to facilitate business growth. We continued to invest in digital technologies, which have helped us to improve operational efficiencies, aided better decision making, and created an immersive customer experience. To keep the organisation future-ready with the next generation technologies, we have adopted a ‘cloud-first strategy’ for our critical business applications and created a robust strategy for the same. Accordingly, we have migrated all instances of our ERP to the cloud and are in the process for other business-critical applications. It brings scalability, agility, security, and a lower cost of ownership. This is a stepping stone towards our journey of new edge technologies; AI/ML/IoT whenever and wherever required.
We have embarked on a multi-year transformation journey where we aim to achieve industry leading growth rate in line with marquee value creators, and market leaders in wires and cables and build a robust new age consumer electricals business. Project Leap is a multi-year transformational programme aimed at having the right building blocks in place which will enable us to achieve 200 billion of the top line by FY26. It includes a range of strategic themes and initiatives focused on growth, profitability, and long-term capacity building for the organisation across B2B and B2C businesses
Polycab’s key themes and priorities for the coming year are:
- Go-to-Market – Digitise the entire distribution ecosystem Scale up in emerging India and alternate channels
- Customer Centricity – enhance visibility and control of secondary sales by significantly improving understanding end users
- Winning with new products – execute the NPD roadmap to drive market share gains as well as premiumisation
- Governance – monitor progress of all building blocks towards clearly defining growth and profitability drivers
WCI: Kindly elaborate on some of the Industry 4.0 initiatives taken by your company.
BS: We constantly strive to improve our operations through the adoption of the latest advanced technologies and digitalisation. We look at technology as an enabler and continue to invest in solutions aimed to improve efficiency, optimise inventory levels, and streamline the supply chain, thereby reducing dead stock with trade/company and improving receivables. We are leveraging digital to transform our business and using analytics to promote integrated business decision-making.
Meanwhile, the sectors that we serve, such as construction, consumer goods, utilities and telecommunications are being disrupted by Industry 4.0 technologies. As a major player in the wire & cables and FMEG industry, we are assessing the situation and devising our growth strategies accordingly.
Also Read: Polycab enters into Master Service Agreement with TANFINET for BharatNet Phase-II
WCI: Please take us through some of the technology-driven products manufactured by your company.
BS: We are constantly working to upgrade the technology used in the production process and bring to the table customer-centric meaningful innovations. Polycab India manufactures halogen-free cable with energy-efficient E-Beam technology facilitates high energy saving and reduces carbon footprint. The wires & cables produced from E-Beam technology are having excellent electrical, mechanical and fire properties with low production of waste and causing no harm to the environment. We have relaunched Polycab Green Wire with a new product proposition that emphasises the use of 5-in-1 Green Shield technology. Our products reflect a genuine sense of eco-consciousness and are produced using environment-friendly materials and processes that conserve energy and natural resources.
