With the advancements in wireless technology and hardwares, Internet of Things (IoT) has witnessed tremendous growth in this decade. Emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles, smart homes, smart cites, and more are making IoT more valuable for their smooth functioning. It’s fair to say that the upcoming times will be much more dependent on the IoT. In an interview with Insights Success Magazine, Dr. Keshab Panda, CEO & Managing Director of L&T Technology Services shared his keen observations and experiences in the IoT space and his journey in growing and leading his company in this new era.
What do you think about the current scenario of IoT Solution industry?
The IoT landscape across the globe is gradually maturing with businesses realizing the imminent benefits arising out of its adoption. Verticals such as manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, telecom, energy to name a few, are leading the race towards adoption of the concept. The result is a massive sea change in the way these sectors have digital transformed. The resultant benefits are not only restricted to financial parameters, but also positively impacting factors such as workforce safety, green environment to name a few.
Sir, please tell us something about your company and its services.
L&T Technology Services Limited (LTTS) is a leading global pure-play engineering services company that possesses a multi-vertical expertise and serves more than 200 customers globally, 48 of which are included in the top 100 Global Engineering R&D spenders. The customer base of the company is spread across the globe including 52 Fortune 500 companies and its global workforce numbering over 11,000 is spread across 15 global delivery centers and 28 global sales offices. In the last five years. The company has made investments in 39 innovations labs catering to areas such as IoT, Engineering Analytics, Value Engineering, Augmented Reality Applications and security to name a few.
Entrenched in the belief that curiosity shapes the contours of a better future, LTTS has crafted an innovation-led strategy to steer its growth trajectory to evolve into a global leader in Engineering Research & Development service (ER&D). The ER&D service of the company caters to all major industries like Transportation, Industrial Products, Telecom & Hi-Tech, Medical Devices and Process Industry offering solutions in the areas of mechanical & manufacturing engineering, embedded systems, software engineering & process engineering.
The company is constantly engaged in scaling up its proprietary IoT solution UBIQWeise™ which is a homegrown platform with a low deployment barrier and no cloud lock-in constraints. This platform is used by customers for data collection and aggregation, device health monitoring and predictive and prescriptive analytics. LTTS has deployed numerous unique solutions leveraging UBIQWeise™ including Smart transportation, Smart homes & Smart kitchen appliances, Smart construction etc. Additionally, LTTS has also perceived how the proliferating connected devices will drive the demand for massive connectivity bandwidth in the near future. To bank on this opportunity, the company has developed Narrow Band IoT solution (NB-IoT) that will allow a wide range of IoT devices and services to connect using cellular telecommunication bands.
How did you get inspired to become an IoT Solution provider?
Engineering services based value proposition has been the core fundamental of LTTS. Our journey has spanned from being leader in conventional ER&D services to value engineering and now to digital engineering space. Thus we have consistently and proactively sensed the needs of the changing times and our offerings in the IoT domain are basis this approach.
What are the out-of-the-box offerings that make your company unique in the market?
LTTS has a strong focus on four transformative areas namely – Digital Engineering, Smart Manufacturing, Pervasive Engineering and Perceptual Engineering. Betting on these four pillars of new-age engineering, LTTS aims to disrupt the traditional ways of doing business and enable its clients to stay ahead of the curve. LTTS is at the global forefront of enabling smart manufacturing having already carved out success stories for its clients such as integrating a new automobile model into existing manufacturing lines using virtual simulation of robotic welding, PLC programming and HMI design.
On Digital Engineering, LTTS’ indigenously built i-BEMS platform is deployed to develop the world’s smartest office campus in Israel in collaboration with Microsoft. The smart campus will be the centerpiece for a new era of modern Smart City technologies that use energy efficiency systems, lighting controls, thermostats & sensors.
On the Pervasive technology front, LTTS will continue to invest in domain of embedded applications. The company has developed a welding machine that learns machine usage patterns using an AI Algorithm and creates a library of different users as per their skills. The welding machine provides Real Time Weld Score and suggests training to welders based on the score.
Perceptual engineering will make machines and products intelligent and give them the ability to think and learn. Already making progress on this front, LTTS has developed advanced driver assistance solution (ADAS) to automate and enhance vehicle systems. Majority of the systems leverage multiple cameras and radars whose data is processed by sophisticated imaging algorithms in order to become the eyes of the vehicle and the security, the technology also provides luxury to the driver in order to make navigation hassle free.
From the beginning till today, list out toughest difficulties you faced and lessons you have learned from them?
IoT has gained traction only in the last few years, however we have been working with the technology for the past many years and over the time, we have conducted numerous experiments in the IoT space. However, it is quite a task to capitalize on each and every experiment. Typically IoT projects go through three phases- PoC, pilot and rollout. And each of these phases have a dropout possibility. These dropouts can be due to a technical failure, where the solution would work well in the lab but not as intended at the client site. It can even be due to business or return over investment (RoI) related issue, where the cost of deploying the technology is far greater than the value it would generate. We also come across situations where the workers are reluctant to adapt to new technology due to various reasons. Altogether, we have comes across multiple difficulties in terms of technological barriers, process barriers and ROI barriers and it has helped us to develop a mindset that gives us the strength to give our best in overcoming any challenge that one may encounter.
With the introduction of new technologies like AI and vast improvement in wireless technologies & telecom infrastructure, what are the scopes and challenges coming with it?
With the advancement in technologies like AI and IoT, the telecom sector is witnessing a phase of disruption. This ongoing process of transformation into a next generation network will employ an extensive system of modern network elements such as digital telephone exchanges, mobile switching centers, media gateways and signaling gateways. Also with the 5G wave already upon us and its unique structure to power the internet of things, the 5G paradigm will deliver wireless connectivity with low latency, high reliability, strong security and always-on availability. This will allow the telecom companies to provide more services and capitalize on the valuable user data born from IoT devices.
What can be expected from your company in near future?
The company is emphasizing towards building learning capabilities into its analytics and not just delivering analytics like long terms trends, correlation or clustering. We will leverage technologies like AI and machine learning to integrate learning capabilities within the data.
About Dr. Keshab Panda
A Scientist turned Tech Industry Veteran, Dr. Keshab Panda is the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of L&T Technology Services Limited. With over 31 years of global industry experience in research, conceptualizing, creating, operationalizing and turning around complex technology and engineering services businesses, Dr. Panda believes in providing solutions to all kinds of engineering problems. His visionary and exemplary leadership has played an instrumental role in driving the company’s business to new heights and has spearheaded LTTS to win several awards & accolades.
A strong supporter of India’s status as a startup hub, Dr Panda’s vision is to take technology to the most remote regions and use it for the benefit and betterment of the people.
L&T Technology Services Limited: Engineering the Change
