Indus Valley Times

·  The company organized a special knowledge-sharing session with startup partners

·  Collaborating with nearly 60tech startups on over 90 projects to enhance operational excellence

By Dr Rama Chandra Behera

Bhubaneswar, Jan.17 : On National Startup Day, Vedanta Aluminium, India’s largest producer of aluminium, is celebrating its collaboration with nearly 60 cutting-edge technology startups on 90 diverse projects.Going beyond conventional notions of manufacturing, the company is utilising Industry 4.0 technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML),Drone technology,Computer Vision, Robotics and more, to drive operational excellence and innovation across its functions.

In celebration of National Startup Day, the company invited several leading startups for amultifaceted knowledge-sharing session to showcase the successful outcomes of their collaboration and demonstrate the impact of emerging technologies across Vedanta Aluminium’s critical operations. These include diverse scenarios such as the company’s smelters, alumina refinery, power plants,mines,material handling, supply chain, and HSE (Health, Safety, and Environment) practices.

Aligned with the ethos of ‘Startup India’ and ‘Make in India’, this endeavour was an integral facet of the company’s initiative, Vedanta Spark, a unique global corporate innovation, accelerator, and venture program that empowers startups to create large-scale impact by leveraging transformative technologies to solve business challenges at scale. Under the Vedanta Spark project, Vedanta Aluminium has fostered partnerships with deep tech startups for projects like predictive and prescriptive analytics to enhance operational efficiency in smelters, IOT solutions for continuous monitoring of critical production parameters, advanced modelling for quality control of finished goods, startup optimization o fpower plants, AR/VR/XRsimulations for safety training of employees, drone-based surveillance, and many more.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. John Slaven, CEO, Vedanta Aluminium said, “The rise of India’s economy to global prominence is fuelled by itsyouthful dynamism and unwavering entrepreneurial zeal. The nation is home to one of the world’s most thriving startup and entrepreneurial ecosystems. As India’s largest producer of aluminium, Vedanta Aluminium complements the relentless drive radiating from these startups, leading to collaborative efforts for global excellence. With aluminium emerging as the cornerstone for a sustainable future, our path to exponential growth relies on being digital-first and future-ready.Therefore, we actively collaborate with tech startups, infusing cutting-edge technologies and global expertise to elevate our manufacturing and operational excellence.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Raju Yadati – Founder & Director, Glovision Techno Services Pvt. Ltd.says, “At Glovision, we build cutting-edge cloud-based IOT applications for Vedanta Aluminium to optimize logisticsand transportation, thereby contributing to safer and more productive mining operations. It has been our privilege to work with the company.”

Adding his views, Himanshu Srivastava, Director – Customer Success, ZestIOT, “We have deployed our propriety deep tech AI/ML algorithms which are used at the company’s Jharsuguda smelter operations to enhance accuracy and transparency in critical operations. We thank Vedanta Aluminium for their mentorship, which has been invaluable.”

To cultivate a culture of innovation and transform employees into intrapreneurs, Vedanta Aluminium has established‘Innovation Cafés’ across its business units. These vibrant spaces serve as incubators for passion projects, where employees and business partners collaborate to tackle diverse business challenges, pooling internal expertise and producing innovative solutions.Simultaneously, the company actively nurtures an extensive ecosystem of rural and micro-entrepreneurs in its operational regions, which lie in the hinterlands of the nation. Vedanta Aluminium’s expansive value chain, customer network, and supplier network have not only fostered numerous MSMEs but have also elevated many to the status of valued suppliers and esteemed business partners for the company, helping them become a part of the global value chain.