QUARTERLY MAGAZINE July 2023 Vol 13
QUARTERLY MAGAZINE July 2023 Vol 13
Focus
The RPG Innovation Festival is an annual event that celebrates and promotes an innovative spirit across the Group. Over the years, this festival gained prominence and has grown to become a flagship event, with innovation and creativity at its forefront.
Inaugurating the fifth season of the festival, Chairman Harsh Goenka said, “We have embedded innovation as an integral part of all processes in the Group and have strived to build an environment that supports creative thinking and growth, through various initiatives. One such initiative is the Innovation Festival.
RPG Innovation Festival is the celebration of creativity and deploying it practically. It was energising to see the confluence of the top 32 entries on a single platform on Founder’s Day. ”
Rajat Bhargava,
CEO – Speciality Sector & Head – Group Transformation
This year, the festival received a staggering 747 entries, up 43% from last year, demonstrating the zeal and commitment to innovation among RPGians globally. After a rigorous judging process, the top 32 projects were shortlisted for a final showcase on 1st March, 2023.
The festival was organised in a hybrid setup — a gala physical event at RPG House in Mumbai, which was supported by an immersive platform online. This ensured that RPGians across the world could log into the event, and experience cutting-edge innovations from across group companies.
Shiv Shivakumar, Former Group Executive President at Aditya Birla Group, was invited to deliver an invigorating keynote address. He shared examples from his illustrious career marked with path-breaking innovations and a thinking that helped reshape the businesses he led, while encouraging others to think out of the box. He shared, “Innovation is the only competitive advantage but no company has a birthright over it.”
The event culminated with the Innovation Awards, which recognised winners and runners-up from each RPG company, the Viewer’s Choice Award, and the grand prize of the event, the Chairman’s Award.
CEAT - World’s first safer and smarter tyre change indicator
The team wanted to create a safer and smarter tyre change indicator that is easy for customers to understand. Thus was born a unique solution, a yellow strip embedded within the tread portion of the tyre, which is not visible when it is new. As the tyre wears off over time, this yellow strip starts appearing, indicating that it’s time to change the tyre.
Winner – Elimination of internal steam from curing process
The team has created a solution to perform the curing process without steam, by using a specialised system that heats the inside of a curing bladder. This industry-first solution, designed and developed in-house, includes a heater and impeller mounted on a hollow shaft motor, which can heat nitrogen up to 200oC.
Winner – Precast elevated storage reservoir
During construction, erection work requires specifically skilled professionals, and is extremely labour intensive. The KEC team deployed precast construction to solve this problem for beams and columns up to staging height. The precast construction is completed at the precast yard, and erection is done at the site with the help of a crane. This lends better finishing quality and reduces overall construction time, up to staging height.
Runner Up – Optipile: Pile design optimiser
The team has designed an industry-first tool named Optipile, which enables automatic optimisation of pile foundations for transmission towers. The tool is powered by a genetic AI algorithm that ensures global minimum cost across all possible designs, and generates a one-click report of the optimised designs. In the past, these designs were done manually on Excel sheets, presenting various problems for the team.
Winner – Smart Utility Servicing
This project was designed for a customer in the utilities industry, and especially for underground utilities such as gas pipelines, telecom cables, and water and electricity lines. While undertaking repairs, a small error would not only impact the continuity of some services but also put human lives in danger as the process is currently being done manually.
The Zensar team proposed a business process transformation, using technologies such as automation, AI and computer vision to assist the customer with faster response time, higher accuracy and less manual effort by creating safe working conditions.
Runner Up – Virtual banking in the Metaverse, and beyond
Zensar wants to help banks envision the right pathway to creating a Metaverse banking channel.
A preferred channel of engagement is always the primary focus for any bank. The advent of digital tools has shifted the focus from branch banking to mobile banking. Now, a new frontier beckons – combining the personal touch of a branch with advanced digital technology led features. The younger, tech-savvy generation prefers the comfort and convenience of ‘As a Service’ and ‘Do it Yourself (DIY)’ approaches of banking over conventional modes. Metaverse banking allows these young customers with funds, to do both.
Virtual banks in the Metaverse will have the following advantages to offer both banks and their customers:
Winner – Digitising workmanship in cable jointing
Faced with a unique problem of reported damage to cable joints post-deployment and poor quality issues leading to loss of revenues for the customer, the Raychem RPG team created a unique service app that can automate quality checks, track and enable customer sign-off, standardise terms, and record in a database for future use.
The app enables full digital traceability, covering man, method and tooling of every joint, protects Raychem RPG against liabilities by thorough digital documentation, and is able to ascertain the exact cause of failure to a customer, resulting in focused solution deployment.
Runner Up – Revolutionary 110 kV high voltage covered conductor solution
The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) was planning to upgrade an existing 12kM, 110 kV single circuit line to 110kV/220kV Multi Voltage Multi Circuit (MVMC) line as part of its capacity improvement programme. The critical aspect was to ensure that the existing power flow remained uninterrupted during upgradation work. To solve this problem, Raychem RPG came up with a unique covered conductor solution, a first in the world! Due to this, the 110kV covered conductor installed on 14m (A) pole needed minimal right of way and other clearances.
Winner – Uro Connect: Expanding horizons in urology
Uro Connect is a knowledge dissemination platform that works to upgrade non-urologists on urological ailments/therapies through certified urologists. By bringing innovative scientific solutions like developing new prescribers in urology, the company has successfully been changing the perceptions of RPGLS Urology.
This project will not only help develop knowledge-based relations with customers and build a brand image by increasing voice of share, but also create an incremental ₹ 15 lakh in monthly sales in the urology business and develop a new prescriber base as well for urology therapy.
Runner Up - RPGserv 2.0
Prior to implementation of this solution, there was huge wastage in input distribution using manual tracking, thereby creating a huge abyss for all the marketing BATs, and there was limited brand recall. After the implementation of RPG Serv, an anytime-anywhere doctor support initiative, the team has been able to grow stickiness, engage doctors better, and enable specific targeting through sales literature, giveaways and physician samples. The team has also introduced services such as clinic sanitisation, and distribution of a range of PPE and home kits.
Winner – Digital decision support system
This is an advanced AI-enabled solution to predict and detect a pest, namely the ‘Red Spider Mite (RSM)’ in tea growing fields. The average crop loss from an infestation ranges between 5% to 15%. Two solutions have been deployed in HML’s Surianalle tea estate in Munnar, Kerala, to control the spread by forecasting the probability, and detecting early actionable points.
The first solution is based on localised weather stations (IIoT) that capture 12 weather parameters and an additional six parameters relating to the climate and the physiological condition of the plants.
The second AI-based solution is a satellite mapping model, which detects the infested areas in the field, and provides the latitude and longitude of the location to enable corrective response in the early stages of infestation.
Winner – Organisation wide guilds and communities
Strong Learning Culture: Learning is not only about skills and competencies, but also about recognising the human element, and nurturing the relationships. We at Zensar, strongly believe in building relationships and helping each other grow. And this is the foundation of our initiative - Guilds and Communities (G&C) – where knowledge network is alive, and interactions are built. This platform helps to augment cross-functional knowledge and cross-organisational perspectives to encourage knowledge sharing, build utilities, set standards, problem solving, mentoring, co-creation and represent Zensar in the most renowned industry conferences, chapters of prime technologies/domains. Guild is a closed group of specialists, leaders of a domain, technology or role.
