Nasscom CoE, IoT and AI focusing on solving real-world challenges: Sanjeev Malhotra

Established in 1988, NASSCOM is a non-profit industry association in India that has made phenomenal contributions to India's GDP, exports, employment, infrastructure and global visibility. NASSCOM’s relentless pursuit has been to build the architecture integral to the development of the IT-BPM sector through policy advocacy and help in setting up the strategic direction for the sector to unleash its potential and dominate newer frontiers.

Sanjeev Malhotra, CEO, Nasscom Center of Excellence, IoT and AI, talks about this initiative. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: How are you focusing on solving real-world challenges?

Sanjeev Malhotra: For the NASSCOM Center of Excellence – IoT & AI, solving the real-world challenges, is how we primarily measure the impact being made. We work with different stakeholders like governments, enterprise partners to find their problem statements on one hand and with startups/tech players on the other hand to find suitable solutions to the problems. This allows us to bring the innovative solutions to unique problems being faced by different stakeholders, apart from providing opportunities to the startups to showcase their solutions/technical capabilities and generate business.

Some of the examples in this area are using camera for quality inspection at a cylinder bottling plant, movement tracking of fork lift on the shop floor, automated counting of cylinders using camera at bottling plant, use of RPA to automate database activities etc.

DQ: What are the solutions developed so far, for Covid-19?

Sanjeev Malhotra: Startups in the country have jumped to the forefront in battle against the Covid-19 impact and have come up with various kind of solutions throughout the country. The examples include, platform for remote management of AC in hospitals, automatic sensor-based hand sanitization solutions, development of patient tracking platform, which can be used to generate the geo-fencing also using the call data record provided by government, 3D printing to create critical components needed for ventilators, UV-based sanitization boxes to sanitize the products, low cost sanitization tunnels, etc. These are just some of the examples in which innovative solutions have been developed and deployed for Covid-19.

DQ: What are the recent IoT solutions that are being developed?

Sanjeev Malhotra: Innovators continue to build solutions for different areas. Some of the areas where startups enrolled with NASSCOM CoE have developed solutions using 3D imaging to help neuro surgeons for surgery, development of remote experience zone for vehicle showroom, using AR/VR for remote assistant for maintenance activities, remote monitoring of assembly line operations and equipment failure prediction, worker tracking and safety solutions for plant operations, underwater drones to inspect the pipelines, etc.

Again, these are just some of the examples where innovative solutions based on digital technology are being developed and deployed by the startups in the country.

DQ: How is NASSCOM proposing business resiliency in this period?

Sanjeev Malhotra: Business resiliency and getting ready for any such future shock requires apart from building backups, a focus on technology adoption. For example, there are multiple technology tools available, which can enable a significant part of the workforce to work remotely like remote meetings, document sharing and editing in real time, online discussions including being able to use the VR/AR capabilities. Such adoptions will build the required resiliency in the business operations which will work to protect the businesses from any shocks in the future.

DQ: What are the plans for helping unlock new skills at this time?

Sanjeev Malhotra: NASSCOM, in partnership with the corporate partners, has designed the future skills platform, which has different modules to train the workforce in digital skills required. This platform is being made available through partnership with educational institutes and corporates, with many of those being signed already.

DQ: How are you advising companies regarding BCP (business continuity process)?

Sanjeev Malhotra: BCP is related to the business resilience. As companies start putting focus on adoption of digital technologies in their operations, the processes will become lesser prone to the disruptions on account of the situation we have seen with Covid-19 or any other such situation, which may cause their people to not be available in the office.

Of course, this does mean ensuring that IT infrastructure is robust and secure, with suitable backup capabilities. However, there are multiple cloud-based solutions, which, many companies are either using or exploring to build such remote operation capabilities.