Bharat Light and Power offers digital solutions to Covid-related problems—like AI-monitored closed-circuit video feeds to ensure social distancing is maintained on factory floors. A breach automatically triggers a notification, sent to management and work

His firm’s applications are targeted towards ensuring worker safety on the shop floor—these include closedcircuit video feeds to ensure social distancing, PPE compliance and the wearing of masks. If there is a breach, an alert is sent to factory security or management and to the worker’s phone in real time. “The whole aim was to bring industry back to some degree of normalcy,” he says. One of his major clients is the electrical equipment company Havells. Other clients include steel producers and automotive parts manufacturers.

Design Café, a Bengaluru-based architectural and interior design firm, is perhaps one of the few in the country with a fully-automated shop floor (for furniture construction). “Today, 90 per cent of our employees are working from home,” says Shezan Bhojani, CEO of the firm. Bhojani has replaced the physical experience of his centre with a virtual tour. Most design consultants are now working from home, a trend he plans to continue with. “We will offer people flexibility, and we have the systems in place for that. Office footprint will reduce to 33 per cent.” Besides social distancing in the factory, all consultations with designers now take place virtually via software that allows people to use the firm’s design centre online, creating a virtual on-site experience.

Covid-19 has been both a major disruption to business as usual, as well as an opportunity for firms to restructure their business models. Companies selling automated solutions have seen a surge in demand, with firms that have ramped up their digital presence seeing sales quickly rising back to pre-Covid levels.

Even before the pandemic hit, India had a number of automated factories—large multinational corporations have invested in IoT, AI, robotics and smart sensors to deliver efficiency. These include General Electric’s precision engineering factory at Chakan in Maharashtra, the Volvo Group’s diesel engine factory at Pithampur in Madhya Pradesh and Honda’s scooter plant at Vithalapur in Gujarat. There are several others that have adopted computer-aided manufacturing. Nonetheless, Indian firms’ adoption of robots is much lower than firms in China or Japan. Nearly every third robot produced in the world is deployed in China. According to a report by the Frankfurt-based International Federation of Robotics, China’s annual sales volume for industrial robots has reached the highest level ever recorded for a country. A report by US market research company Forrester Research notes that Asian enterprises, especially those in China and India, are fast adopting AI to reinvent their business models. Indian systems integrators are also participating in AI consortiums such as Open AI. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also pitched for AI to be developed and adapted by Indian firms to increase productivity. In his 2018 budget speech, former finance minister Arun Jaitley had also said that the NITI Aayog would spearhead a national programme in this field.

Nonetheless, there are downsides. A 2019 study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that 44 million men and 12 million women in India were at risk of losing their jobs to automated systems by 2030. This study was conducted before the pandemic—and it would be safe to say that Covid-19 has hastened the process. India could go through a particularly difficult period as it tries to re-skill its workforce. ■