There has been a global movement towards smarter cities, acknowledging the power of technology to make daily lives easier and safer whilst providing customized experiences. Within the elevator industry, this movement has been represented by the adoption of smart, connected and remotely monitored and managed elevators.
Whether it is a new installation, modernization or carrying out routine maintenance, TK Elevator is committed to delivering professional, dependable, and timely responses to customer requests always.
TK Elevator’s expertise in providing customized solutions for large infrastructure and demanding high-rise projects makes its products a perfect match for the key growth sectors in the Indian construction industry.
Having established a base of over 2100 employees across an extensive network of four regional offices, 23 Branches and 74 Service and Response Centres in India, the company is determined to serve its customers on a 24/7 basis even at the remotest locations. With its multi-purpose factory at Chakan, Pune providing product and R&D support to its customers and professional team, TK Elevator is all set to tap the growing elevator market of India.
In the Business of Moving People
TK Elevator (formerly known as thyssenkrupp Elevator) specializes in providing advanced solutions for moving people from one place to another: vertically and horizontally.
TK Elevator employs a highly trained and dedicated workforce of over 900 service team members, maintaining over 25,000 units across India. The company’s portfolio comprises a wide range of passenger and freight elevators, escalators, and moving walks that are industry-leading in terms of engineering and technology. Its extensive range of machine room-less (MRL), as well as machine room (MR) products, ensures that it always has the right products to cater for the needs of low to mid-and high-rise projects.
TK Elevator also offers premium high-speed elevators that are customized for super high-rise projects, and customized mobility solutions for commercial projects, malls and shopping complexes, hospitals, and hotels. For situations where outright performance is not a primary criterion, but functional excellence, reliability, and durability remain essential. The company’s range of practical mid/low-speed elevators provide excellent value for leaner budgets.
Inspiration Behind Stepping into the Field
India is at the forefront of information technology development, world-class solutions, and support are locally available for cloud applications, artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, which gives the company an advantage in bringing the latest technologies to the local market.
At present, affordable and reliable run-of-the-mill products and solutions still account for a majority of the demand for elevators and escalators in India, as the country continues to urbanize. Although it will still take time for the local market to shift its demand to the higher end of the product spectrum, the company sees smart cities as the future direction and its advantage in leveraging local IT support to make its smart mobility solutions more reliable and accessible to customers in India.
As a market leader and to stay ahead of the competition, TK Elevator has made the R&D and promotion of its smart building and city solutions a high priority in India. As more high-end construction and infrastructure projects, which emphasize sustainability and speed gain popularity in the Indian market, the TKE brand will be one of the best-known names in India for energy-efficient, AI-assisted, centrally managed and maintained elevator solutions.
Box Full of Benefits
TK Elevator’s TEAMService brings the industry’s most comprehensive approach to keeping people moving safely and reliably, by offering systematic and stress-free maintenance service to customers. It has the resources and capability to service, maintain, and source replacement parts even for the third party manufactured units so that its customers can rest assured that their entire portfolio of escalators and/or elevators regardless of the manufacturer is in the good hands of TK Elevator.
To ensure seamless service and utmost safety, the company has also rolled out a practice of ‘Preventative Maintenance’ for some of its major customers. Under such maintenance arrangement, critical parts of the elevators/escalators will be directly replaced by new parts once they have reached their expected component life span, even if they are still functioning properly.
Maintenance aside, modernization (MOD) is another key service TK provides to elevators and escalators operated by its customers. Its manufacturing facility and technical team can renew and modernize escalators and elevators of any make, the modernized units will conform to the strictest quality and safety standards same as TKE-manufactured units.
Among other product enhancements, TK Elevator has developed the following game-changing signature solutions to cater for the needs of smart buildings and cities:
- MULTI: MULTI is the world’s first rope-free elevator that moves multiple cars in a single shaft vertically and horizontally and reduces elevators’ footprint while increasing passenger throughput. MULTI is set to revolutionize tall building construction. With MULTI’s rope-free system, architects and developers are no longer restricted in their designs by concerns about elevator shaft height and vertical alignment. MULTI opens the door to design possibilities in all directions.
- TWIN: The TWIN elevator system consists of two cabs that operate in the same shaft independent of each other. Both cabs operate under the same intelligent group control system and are equipped with an innovative quadruple redundancy safety system. It uses less energy while transporting more passengers than conventional elevators.
- MAX: MAX is a game-changing predictive and pre-emptive service solution that extends remote monitoring capabilities to increase current availability levels of existing and new elevators. Utilizing the power of Microsoft Azure Internet of Things (IoT) technology, MAX makes it possible for an elevator to ‘tell’ service technicians its real needs, including identification of repairs, component replacements, and proactive system maintenance.
Overcoming Challenges
TK Elevator invests significant resources in R&D. Its products are designed with a simple philosophy of higher efficiency, fewer maintenance intervals, and lower associated emissions. Strong design and engineering are its core strengths, which form the basis of the business.
Meanwhile, many parts of India are still at their early stage of urbanization, which means TK Elevator must strike a balance in satisfying the massive demand for reliable and quality mobility products. At the same time introducing to the market state-of-the-art advanced mobility solutions that utilize assorted smart technologies to make elevators and escalators more efficient, and more user and environment friendly.
Beating the Pandemic
The Covid-19 outbreak has had a severe impact on society and the economy, it also changes how people travel, commute, and conduct business activities. Passengers have become more conscious about elevators hygiene and safety protocols, while businesses, property owners, and managers are looking into monitoring their mobility assets without the need of being on-site.
Inevitably with lock-down arrangements in place, the company’s efforts to meet with and provide service to the customers have been affected during the most severe period. To cope with these challenges, TK Elevator has been working hard to provide solutions for safer rides and more efficient ways to remotely monitor and manage its units amid the pandemic, and most of the solutions have been based on digital enhancements and technologies.
Protecting the health and safety of the customers, employees and communities during the pandemic has been the most important and challenging task for the company, the TK Elevator team has remained committed to serving its customers and continued to support businesses while observing all recommended safety precautions.
It has conducted a vaccination drive to protect the health and safety of its employees, and to give its customers the peace of mind to work with them. Despite all these challenges, the service and installation teams have gone against all odds to provide round the clock support during these unfavourable circumstances for its customers.
Words from the Best
The idea of building a smart city aims to improve the quality of urban living, make horizontal and vertical travels easier and reduce its impact on the environment.
When coming up with solutions for a smart city, the company’s advice for the younger generation is to focus on how their solution would improve lives and what kind of additional value it will bring forth to the society; this is exactly the rationale behind the various next-generation mobility solutions. As cities urbanize and vertical transportation becomes a necessity, company’s in-car infotainment and connectivity solutions make elevator rides more pleasant and productive. Mobile phone-based remote calling solutions not only shorten the wait time for elevator rides but also make your daily vertical travel completely touchless, safe from harmful germs and bacteria.
By offering the possibility to operate two independent elevator cars in the same shaft, its signature TWIN elevator system effectively reduces energy use and as a result the carbon footprint of vertical travels; this is just another example among many, of how TK Elevator invest its resources and efforts in making urban living more sustainable and user-friendly.
Trailblazing Towards Tomorrow
The company’s long-term business strategy is to continue growing by offering ingenious, customized, and energy-efficient mobility solutions. It is also determined to strengthen its share in the maintenance and service business by promoting and leveraging its extensive experience in the industry.
With its state-of-the-art multi-purpose facility (MPF) in Pune, configured in line with the Indian government’s ‘Make in India’ initiative to promote innovation and local manufacturing, the company is determined to serve every customer with quality local-manufactured elevators and escalators. It is also keen to grow with the communities it operates in, by creating more local employment opportunities in its sales and service branches and manufacturing locations.
TK Elevator spares no efforts and resources in fostering innovation. Its 84,000 square-metre multi-purpose facilities (MPF) was established with an investment of about Rs.300 Cr. It includes manufacturing and logistics centre, customer showroom with experience centre, training centre and R&D centre. The facility was designed with future expandability in mind, with an initial capacity of manufacturing 6,000 elevator units, extendable to over 10,000 units in the foreseeable future.
Its Pune multi-purpose facility (MPF) will enable the company to significantly expand in the region and support the increasing growth of the Indian construction sector, driven by strong urbanization.
Current Industry Insights
India is one of the fastest and largest growing markets for smart cities due to government initiatives and wide and advanced adoption of technology. The smart cities mission of the government of India is based on a sustainable and inclusive development approach. The mission aims to create a model that can be replicated, catalysing the creation of similar smart cities in various parts of the country.
As per Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs recent report, Smart Cities Mission (SCM) is being implemented in 100 cities. As on 30 June,2021, 2,734 projects worth ₹ 46,769 crore have been completed. Therefore, investing in the development of mobility solutions to serve the needs of smart cities is not only a forward-looking business decision but also TK Elevator’s commitment to upholding corporate responsibility and growing with India.
