The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 16, 2023
On National Start-up Day, Vedanta Aluminium, India’s largest producer of aluminium, announced that it is working with nearly 40 leading technology start-ups, to collaborate with India’s rich start-up ecosystem and power the next phase of its growth journey. The company’s aspiration to be the world’s best and most sustainable aluminium producer is seeing it harness the potential of Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Web 3.0 for manufacturing excellence. Towards making the Aluminium Business a digital-first organisation, the start-ups are working in the areas of value creation, volume growth, cost efficiency, excellence in business and ESG (Environment, Social & Governance).
This initiative is a part of the company’s Vedanta Spark programme, a global corporate innovation & ventures programme, which offers venture investing, start-up incubation, pilot programs with start-ups on various business cases, and venture building programs with various universities to create a pool of new start-ups. From immersive safety trainings to just-in-time supply of spare parts through 3D printing, predictive & prescriptive maintenance, asset reliability and more, the company is deploying emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, robotics, power electronics, visual intelligence and additive manufacturing.
Speaking about the initiative, Vedanta Aluminium CEO Rahul Sharma said, “At Vedanta Aluminium, we aim to reimagine the role of entrepreneurship in the manufacturing industry, as a catalyst of innovation. With aluminium fast evolving as the strategic metal for a connected tomorrow, we are poised for exponential growth, with digital transformation of our plants at the heart of this journey. And therefore, we are working with nearly 40 leading tech start-ups who are bringing in cutting-edge technologies and their global expertise to enhance our agility and competitiveness.”
Ripik.AI Founder & CEO Pinak Dattaray said, “At Ripik.AI, we build proprietary cutting-edge AI-based applications to drive meaningful KPI movement and business benefits. It is a privilege to work with Vedanta’s Aluminium Business, where we worked with the company to leverage the might of AI and improve efficiency of smelters. We look forward to deepening our relationship with the company and continue to build disruptive products which are pioneers in the aluminium and metals industry, globally.”
“As a global industry leader, backed by a culture of innovation and excellence, Vedanta offers significant opportunities for the Indian start-up ecosystem. Satsafeti has partnered with Vedanta to strengthen the company’s safety culture with our state-of-the-art computer vision technology. With this collaboration, we aim to unlock greater value in the business and establish new industry benchmarks in operational excellence,” said Snehendu Mondal, CEO, Satsafeti (Mondal Ventures LLP).
In addition, to foster a culture of innovation and infuse design thinking amongst employees to turn them into intrapreneurs, Vedanta Aluminium runs vibrant Innovation Cafés across its business units. The Cafés see employees and business partners come together to pursue passion projects on various business cases and crowd source internal expertise and solutions for the same.
Parallelly, with operations in rural hinterlands of the country, the company also nurtures a vast ecosystem of rural and micro-entrepreneurs in the regions where it operates. Vedanta Aluminium’s expansive value-chain, customer and supplier network has fostered thousands of MSMEs, some of whom have also gone on to become suppliers and business partners for the company.
Vedanta Aluminium, a business of Vedanta Limited, is India’s largest producer of aluminium, manufacturing more than half of India’s aluminium i.e., 2.27 million tonnes in FY22. It is a leader in value-added aluminium products that find critical applications in core industries. Vedanta Aluminium ranks 4th in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) 2021 world rankings for aluminium industry, a reflection of its sustainable development practices. With its world-class aluminium smelters, alumina refinery and power plants in India, the company fulfils its mission of spurring emerging applications of aluminium as the ‘Metal of the Future’ for a greener tomorrow.
