PLI scheme was a boon by the government during the toughest times of lockdown: Dr Ajai Garg, MeitY

NASSCOM CoE-IoT & AI has recently organized ‘Voice of Manufacturing Edition 6 – Digital Transformation in Manufacturing Value Chain’ to bring out the larger economic perspective of the manufacturing industry linked with the Digital India Mission. The manufacturing leaders talked about digital maturity, viability, and the ability to adopt digital offerings across their value chain bringing tangible impacts or return on investment (RoI). Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India Org, delivered a keynote address on ‘Taking a leap into next normal in Industry & Innovation’.

“We are at an inflection point in history as we are growing and experiencing an unprecedented change in history. The pace and scale of the changes have been stupendous. Manufacturing is a subset of everything around it. When the lockdown was announced we didn’t have PPE suits and we were looking at other countries, but by July we were exporting PPEs and ventilators. The most profound impact of digitization has been on governance,” said Bagla.

The first session of VoM 6 was on ‘Industry Economic Growth & Digital Vision’ which saw the participation of Dr. Ajai Garg, Senior Director, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY); MP Dubey, Joint Director, STPI (AP); Pranjal Sharma, economic analyst, author and advisor, World Economic Forum (WEF); Dr. Shishir Shrotriya, Counsellor (Science & Technology), Embassy of India in Moscow; and Ravi Aggarwal, President, Automation Industry Association (AIA).

Talking about movement from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0, DrAjaiGarg, Senior Director, MeitY, “The digitalization is riding other sectors now whether agritech or automobile. The pre-COVID era was when manufacturing was based out of geography which created an economic triangle for the world, in the post-COVID era, it is changing from such a monopoly regime to a concept of trusted global supply chain partners. Data security and other security aspects have become a priority. The Government has been pro-active and the PLI scheme came in the toughest times of lockdown. Many policy changes were adopted to bringing in ease of doing business. The second change is in innovation; the world is looking at solutions that are robust and taking care of the other 6 billion people of the world. India has an advantage as it has 50,000 startups. India through its public digital platform is driving a low-cost inclusive digitalisation model that will improve the productivity of all key economic centers.”

Talking of the techno-domain outlook of the Indian industry, MP Dubey, Joint Director, STPI (AP), said, “Upskilling should be done in local languages, we have talked with colleges to give courses on technology in local languages.”

The second session was on ‘Industry digital adoption: Supply chain & logistics’, which saw the participation of SreenivasanBalasubramaniam, CEO, IAMPL; Vijay Kalra, Head – Mahindra Institute of Quality & Chairman, Central Safety Council, Mahindra & Mahindra; NandkumarKulkarni, Director, Manufacturing, Mondelez India; Mohit Jauhari, Head, SCM, Shriram Pistons & Rings; Sunil Mehta, General Manager, Automotive Business, Factory Automation & Industrial Division, Mitsubishi Electric India; and HimaParvataneni, CEO, Navata Supply Chain Solutions.

Vijay Kalra, Head, Mahindra Institute of Quality & Chairman – Central Safety Council, Mahindra & Mahindra, delved on the readiness of the country for technology adoption, and said, “Auto has competition from around the world as everyone wanted to be India. If we have to be there in this environment then speed is very important.”