![Ankur Singh, Co-Founder & CEO Ankur Singh, Co-Founder & CEO](http://www.cioinsiderindia.com/uploaded_images/company_logos/pt8v6.Ankur.jpg)
Ankur Singh
Co-Founder & CEO
The global industry 4.0 market size is projected to reach $165.5 billion by 2026 from $73.9 billion in 2022 at a CAGR of 20.6 per cent during the forecast period. The primary driving factors of the industry 4.0 market are increasing adoption of automated equipment and tools on manufacturing, warehouse and factory floors for increased competitiveness. These technologies are immensely useful in saving time, reducing downtime and eliminating repetitive manual labour in a smart factory.
However, many organisations in the manu-facturing segment find it unfeasible to deploy industry 4.0 technologies in their manufacturing units due to wide range of challenges. Emerging prominently among them is Smart Udyog (A Uniqgrid Brand) that provides robust and scalable industry 4.0 solution to optimize factory operations and bolster productivity in record time and cost.
CIO Insider, recently interacted with Ankur Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, in order to know more about the company and the impact it is making in the industry 4.0 sector.
Could you give a brief account about Smart Udyog as an organization and its position in the market?
Smart Udyog is a comprehensive software platform designed to help manufacturing companies expedite their digitization efforts, optimize productivity and resource management.
As a startup, we’ve invested substantial amount of time in product development to build the entire technology stack inhouse, including software and hardware, that has enabled us to serve some of the prominent companies in the automotive, electronics and FMCG manufacturing sectors.
The resounding positive feedback from our customers has given us tremendous confidence on the reliability of our product in mission critical manufacturing use cases and indicating that our product outcompetes anything currently available in the market.
Tell us about your flagship industry 4.0 solutions or offerings and what makes you a reliable choice for customers?
We’ve developed a versatile software product that is rapidly adaptable to multitudes of industrial use cases, enabling us to deploy specific solutions in less than 30 days, a remarkable feat in the industry accustomed to multi-year digital transformations. Our product’s success is attributed to its numerous features, with a standout being the machine communication interface. This middleware facilitates rapid communication between any industrial machinery and our platform, fostering seamless interaction and driving innovation to new heights in manufacturing companies.
Our rapidly deployable connectors swiftly initiate the processing & analyses millions of data points at the edge, hence removing the necessity for costly machine integration
When visiting a manufacturer’s site with diverse processes and machinery, our software can effortlessly integrate, connecting with machines regardless of the manufacturer. This enables us to retrieve extensive data, establish workflows, and derive meaningful insights. Our adaptable workflow engine allows us to tackle varied machinery and processes without feeling overwhelmed.
Currently, we support over 30 communi-cation protocols across multiple OEMs, including major brands like Mitsubishi, Siemens, Omron, Delta, Makino, Haas and FANUC. We’re continually expanding our library of communication protocols, making it swift to initiate a customer’s digital transformation journey, even for machines from new OEMs. Our platform works equally well even for legacy machines that are not Industry 4.0 compatible.
What are the challenges you solve for customers and could you share a case study reflecting the positive outcomes drawn from your solutions?
Many of our clients operate in the auto motive and manufacturing sectors, specializing in precision parts. Managing a diverse array of machinery from various companies posed a challenge for them, as each machine had distinct purposes and controllers. Our solution addressed their need for a comprehensive 360-degree view of the
factory, overcoming the hurdle of diverse machine origins.
By deploying our platform at their facilities, we facilitated seamless communication with machines of varied types and makes, providing a unified and consistent view. This enabled them to real-time compare different machines and OEMs, unlocking a new level of intel-ligence crucial for enhancing productivity.
How would you describe the team whose brains are behind these solutions? What kind of capabilities they possess and how do they help the company maintain a competitive edge in the market?
We take immense pride in our team. Initially, we assembled a group of highly competitive fresh graduates with exceptional academic backgrounds from renowned colleges nation wide. The team possess a drive to make a significant impact, tackling a niche skill set, which is why we’re building everything from the ground up.
Our team has remained largely unchanged throughout our existence. Combined, the founders bring nearly 35 years of experience in clean tech, robotics, hardware, space technology and embedded hardware. They bring experience of successfully executing projects for prestigious brands such as Havells, Lamborghini, ISRO, Centrica, Delhivery, GREYORANGE and more.
What are the future opportunities Smart Udyog is looking at to achieve its goals? What kind of developments can be expected from the company, going forward?
Moving forward, our goal is to enhance the user friendliness of our middleware. Currently tailored for developers, we aim to evolve it to a point where individuals with moderate technical skills can effectively utilize the middleware and easily extract data from any industrial machine without technical experience. Our vision involves enabling anyone with limited technical abilities to interact with machines and construct their own logical processes. This vision propels our ongoing efforts.
Looking ahead to next year, we plan to expand our support to a more Global and Indian Machinery OEMs. Additionally, we intend to introduce our product to the US and European markets. While we currently have a significant presence in India and a few projects in South Asia and Africa, our aspiration is to establish ourselves in global manufacturing hubs in the coming years.