QUARTERLY MAGAZINE February 2024 Vol 15
QUARTERLY MAGAZINE February 2024 Vol 15
IN CONVERSATION
RB: There are numerous digital projects currently underway. In fact, we are executing over 50 major digital projects right now across the 6 operating companies, in 10 technology areas, and across 9 functions. Some of the major ones include the Industry 4.0, Lighthouse project at CEAT, where a number of AI-ML, IoT, image analytics projects are being undertaken translating into significant benefits. Similarly, a project based on AI-ML is going on at KEC, which translates into significant benefits for a world-class engineering project. At HML there are a number of agri-tech projects, one of the most prominent ones being the optimisation of tea plucking for improved output. At Raychem RPG, there are several projects aimed at improving customer experience by using QR codes on products such as safety gloves, as well as to track the flow of material through the shopfloor, in addition to deploying digital solutions to improve the quality of cable jointing. One of the flagship digital projects at RPG Life Sciences is RPGServ, where we are servicing more than 80,000 doctors on a single digital platform.
In addition, given happiness is our core value, there are a number of things we are doing to improve the happiness of employees, right from chat bots which could engage better with employees, to tools that can improve the productivity of the employees across functions, such as presentations, improved writing, and so on and so forth.
RB: In the last few years, there has been an uptick in digital focus at the Group. This is partly because new tools such as Gen AI and Metaverse are now readily available to us. Moreover, the power of digital, its appreciation and applicability have increased over the last few years. Just in the past year itself, we have doubled the number of digital resources at the Group indicating the importance we are giving this. Similarly, the number of projects has gone up. What we have also started to do is track the impact of these digital projects more systematically.
AD: The difference is basically, we are now also witnessing a lot of pull coming from the user community and the business functions. For example, in Blizzard, our flagship campus engagement initiative … We wanted to reach the students in a manner that is more comfortable and familiar to the young minds. So, this season, we took the competition to the Metaverse while also introducing a social angle. The result has been phenomenal! We have seen a multifold increase in participation and were able to create a collaborative platform for students across multiple top tier business schools.
RB: In the last year, we have spent, on a conservative basis, around ₹50 crores on digital initiatives, and the return on that conservative value is 2 to 2.5. I say conservative, because there are a lot of projects or initiatives which we haven’t included in this which could have had an impact or enabled increase in market share or customer satisfaction. Moreover, we have successfully incubated and fostered three digital-first or digitally enabled businesses – Taabi, TyresNMore and Asvata. These are businesses where at every step, we are leveraging digital in a way that is not done in the traditional businesses.
RB: In terms of institutional digital capabilities, we are doing several things. First, just training or capability-building interventions such as E-Luminati, we are following a phased approach. Phase I is applicable to all employees and focuses on education, acceptance, and openness. Phase II is targeted to build next-level capabilities, especially for those who are involved in implementing and executing use-cases. In the final phase, we will target 1-2% of the organisation who are involved in generating cutting-edge use cases.
In parallel, we are working on augmenting the size of the digital team. In the last nine months alone, we have doubled the number of associates. We are also working towards greater acceptance of digital by the senior leadership team. And finally, engagement with ecosystem partners. I think, this is one area where we learn a lot by talking to the experts, the vendors, the developers. And to that extent, the number of engagements that have happened or that have started to happen, has again, increased a lot.
AD: We have also started newsletters where people can become aware of certain new concepts or technologies and their benefits. In these newsletters, we also present a variety of external perspectives of industry success and failure stories and trends in the hope to learn and implement some of them within the Group.
RB: While we continue to push on each of these 10 technologies, in terms of the focus going forward, I would say three things. First is, scaling up the AI-ML and analytics. As a group or as companies, we have barely scratched the surface, so there is immense potential. Second one is GenAI. It’s a hot topic, and we know that it can make a huge difference to employees at an individual level, as well as functions and companies overall. And third is capability building. So, these are the focus areas, and there are a lot of exciting use-cases, experiments, interventions that are in the pipeline. Just in GenAI itself, we have around 17 use-cases across the group companies that are being scaled up. So, I think, these are some of the major focus areas going forward.
AD: We also intend to focus on creating a data driven decision-making culture, for which a strong backbone and foundational component of AI, ML and data quality cleansing will come into play, and that kind of a framework from data to insighting to business decisioning, would be the strategy to look for, for the next 20 months
RB: Absolutely. I think, a lot of these things work in tandem. Innovation Festival is a platform for people to share their innovations and increasingly, we are seeing more and more digital components in their submissions. The number of entries in the festival has been rapidly rising. Last year, we had seen a 50% increase with ~750 entries. This year, we have received close to 1,400 entries, registering a near 100% increase. Our focus there is, how do we make sure that all the good work which the teams have done and shared on the Innovation Festival platform is mined and leveraged by the companies, especially using digital tools. For eg: could there be GenAI-based interfaces which provides information on the most innovative projects from the festival?
RB: In terms of tools, our focus is on GenAI, analytics, and the creation and incubation of new digital-first businesses, as well as growing the ones which are already there. In terms of capability building, we have E-Luminati and interventions related to that. And the third is about the whole IT/data architecture, or backbone or foundation, on which a lot of these data insights and other digital tools could be orchestrated.
AD: Just to add to this, typically, all digital programmes are cost-intensive. So, it makes sense that we look at all the economies of scale by consolidating certain top spend areas in terms of group-level distribution of these, so that a benefit of those technologies is available to smaller businesses, as well as to the most evolved businesses. So, that’s something which we would also like to move as much as we can into these specific areas, by working with respective businesses. Basically make it affordable to the smaller businesses.
RB: We are fortunate to have 6 group companies, each of them in a diverse centre. And therefore, one of the unique things we could do as a group, is to unlock the synergies between them. And, we try and do it in three ways. Cross-pollinate ideas that have worked in one company to the other. Like, Lighthouse project started in CEAT and we are now taking it to KEC, RRL, RPGLS. Leverage captive customers for digital-first businesses like Taabi. Orchestrate further group-level initiatives especially for new technologies, whether it is blockchain club, GenAI use cases or strategy ... all of these are being pursued at a group level with the involvement of companies.
