The end goal is to pioneer human-robot collaboration to deliver affordable and sustainable technological solutions.

Satish Shukla, Co-Founder & Head, Marketing and HR, Addverb

With the commissioning of the state-of-the-art world class manufacturing facility in Noida, Addverb aims to become the world leader for the mobile robotics segment and intends to make India the factory of the world and a hub of innovation for industry 4.0 technologies, states Satish Shukla, Co-Founder & Head, Marketing and HR, Addverb. Excerpts from the interview…

What is your outlook for the robotics industry in 2021 in terms of growth potential and product innovations?

Once restricted to the industrial sectors such as factories, warehouses and other manufacturing hubs, now they are performing a wide variety of functions and are much advanced with features such as sharp vision control techniques, advanced sensor mechanisms that enable human robot collaboration, and robust software interfaces that provide ease of use and flexibility. With robots being a part of daily operations in many sectors, the overall prospects for this industry are on the high growth end. The robotics market is expected to reach a value of $37 billion between 2019 and 2021, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) with an average growth rate of 21% each year. Logistics robots are expected to lead the way in terms of sales volumes, with approximately 485,000 units to be sold between 2019 and 2021, representing an average 18% increase each year.

Brief us on your road map?

With the commissioning of the state-of-the-art world class manufacturing facility in Noida, Addverb aims to become the world leader for the mobile robotics segment and intends to make India the factory of the world and a hub of innovation for industry 4.0 technologies. In the next year, we aim to generate revenue of Rs. 4000 crore and looking forward to penetrate the consumer industries such as education, hotels, and airports through another level of breakthrough solutions. The end goal is to pioneer human-robot collaboration to deliver affordable and sustainable technological solutions.

What are the major anticipated challenges, and your suggestions to iron out those?

Indian industry is graduating fast from go-downs to modern warehouses, and accordingly the usage of robots and other automation solutions usage such as material handling solutions, IoT solutions etc. The rise of ecommerce, GST introduction and tremendous competition made some companies to take the 1st step to building quality warehouses that are structurally strong, stable, with good flooring and a height of minimum 7m-10m; and these companies are gradually moving towards modern way of handling material. Still, this is 20-25% of total warehousing, and is not enough to bring a significant transformation to suit automation. In fact, automation is much more meaningful when vertical space is utilized along with reasons such as throughput requirements, which can't be achieved by increasing labour, space constraints such as single facility operations, equity or customer demand for instant gratification such as 2-4 hour delivery window, then people need automation. So, after knowing the levers of automation in the Indian context, let's look at the major impediments of using robots for daily operations;

Infrastructure Availability - Height, quality, floor of the building etc is one of the major impediments to adopt automation and robotics. Some of the green field warehouses are built with good standards, but a majority of the warehouses are not.

Approach of the People towards Robotics & Automation- It includes 2 parties;

- OEMs- Most OEMs do not educate people enough about the different types of automation solutions that robots can provide. During our initial days, we gained the trust of customers through PoCs wherein we demonstrated the capabilities of the systems at a miniaturized scale before implementing at a large scale; virtual commissioning of the solutions, workshops and training etc. More and more players should do such knowledge workshops, supply chain meets, PoCs etc to educate the customers and to widen the knowledge of the customers and to enable an informed decision making.

- Customers' Obsession with ROI- Substituting manpower with robots gets justified in developed economies such as Europe & US, but not in India. Here, the parameters that justify robots usage should be- solving the real problems like scale of operations, reduction of reworks, increased throughputs, quality of the work.. etc. More and more projects and operations people must follow this to get approvals.

- The very mindset that warehouse operations can be done by people who have limited knowledge of the technology - Though this scenario is changing, still this is one of the major impediments of adopting robots.

Other key challenges include the lack of homogeneous programming platforms/interfaces, the lack of integrators working across OEMs/geographies / industries, the general lack of experience working with automation, limited retrofitting options, as well as the general lack of suitable/customizable robotics and automation solutions. So, we follow a holistic approach of solving customers' problem end to end through 4D approach of Discover, Design, Deliver and Dedicated Support.

What policy or regulatory support do you expect? And brief us on the wish list from the forthcoming budget?

Biggest problem with the robotics manufacturing is the manufacturing/procuring of the small components. To procure these components from outside would increase the overall cost of the robot, hence indigenous manufacturing is the best solution. To encourage this OEMs need to be provided with

- Support & Funding from Governments: Under Make in India initiative, though government is supporting the setting up of the manufacturing facilities in India, one has to cross a lot of legal and other regulations. The overall process can be smoothening, and the benefits can also be increased.

- Retraining Current Workforces and Qualifying the Next Generation of Workers: According to a recent study, the total number of jobs related to developing and deploying new technologies, i.e., automation-, IT-/ AI-, and robotics-related applications, may grow to 20 to 50 million globally by 2030 - and that as many as 375 million workers globally will have to master fresh skills as their current jobs evolve alongside the rise of automation, robotics, AI, and the capable machines thereby enabled. The talent with robotics-related capabilities is already a rather scarce resource, its scarcity will increase soon, fast, and significantly due to the projected dynamic rise of automation and robotics. So, government should come up with a strategic learning and up skilling plans.

- Infrastructural Facilities: The required infrastructural facilities such as internet, roads, water, electricity and other necessities for the OEMs to set up facilities in tier-2,3 cities to make the robots available to SMBs as well as to increase the employment opportunities.

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