Hitachi takes AI-related solutions from India to world: MD Bharat Kaushal

Kaushal spoke about research, semiconductors and his company's plans

Hitachi, the Japanese conglomerate, has a range of businesses in India: From railway systems to energy and IT solutions. The company takes its learning in India to the rest of the world, said Bharat Kaushal, corporate officer of Hitachi Ltd. and managing director of Hitachi India. Kaushal, in a video interview with Pranjal Sharma, spoke about research, semiconductors and his company’s plans. Edited excerpts: 

 

Hitachi has been in India since the 1930s. What a fantastic journey it has been—isn’t it?

 

India was the first overseas presence of Hitachi anywhere in the world—it was in 1933. The first locomotive for the Indian Railways, in 1953, came from Hitachi. The turbines of Bhakra Nangal dam (in Himachal Pradesh) came from Hitachi. The first telephone exchange in India was set up by Hitachi. So there is a lot of history with pride in partnering the whole journey that India has had since independence. We are now spread across India through companies which are in infrastructure, which are in manufacturing and which are also in digital (systems).

 

 

Can you give us the various sectors you straddle in India?

 

Let me start with infrastructure. Infrastructure for us means rail business, energy business, urbanisation-driven businesses like city gas, water and steel. These have all gone through a very nice evolutionary journey in the Indian context. We have also become the largest rail company in the world with Ansaldo, the Italian giant, joining the Hitachi family; Thales, the French company – and the largest energy transmission company, with ABB’s original power grid business becoming Hitachi Energy.

 

What kind of learning are you getting from these projects that could be scalable globally?

 

Yes. Which is why we say that it's of course India for India and India for the world, because the learning that you get to make now in India are not restricted to very, very baseline industries. But there is a lot still to be done on assisted intelligence and augmented intelligence. But automated intelligence and autonomous intelligence is a space where Indian industry is getting recognised increasingly. We've been helping the Hitachi teams elsewhere in the world, including in North America, in rail and energy and other businesses.

 

It seems that India is important to Hitachi from a research and development (R&D) perspective

 

R&D is a very wide canvas for a company like us. There is the advantage of a global repository of what R&D means...but there is also a centre of excellence; a global centre of excellence for artificial intelligence-related solutions that we take from India to elsewhere in the world.

 

How many countries or how many markets depend on India for some of these insights?

 

I would not like to put a number on it because India teaches you every day. We had 45 per cent of national highway tolls running on our systems because of our ticketing and other experiences. That experience went to the Paris Olympics to do the access control there with the command and control centre here.

 

What is Hitachi's role going to be in India semiconductor efforts?

 

Well, that role is evolving. We are the original supercomputer and semiconductor people -- at that time, when it all started, it was 2 billion computations in one nanosecond. The world speed has gone up to 2 trillion in a nanosecond now. It is touching perhaps every element of the value chain in manufacturing that we are associated with. We are still amongst the largest manufacturers of (computer) wafers, for across the biggest giants, whether it's the Taiwanese, the Samsung, the Intels or anyone in the world. The Indian effort is going in both directions, correctly so. The consumer side, as well as the heavy engineering-driven solutions.

 

There is discussion with all players...because we can add value and we can also be a big market for, you know, the pricing and the cost that we will be able to achieve in India. So, you know, we are excited about how the prioritisation of semiconductors is happening in the government policy.

 

You have almost a dozen verticals and sectors that you have a strong presence in. But what do you think would be driving growth in India in the next few years?

 

India is a story today of where you have the elements. As a banker in the past I can say where there are businesses which are growing, where cash turns three times in a year to where cash doesn't churn once in three years. If you have the bandwidth of tolerance, they're all getting connected.

 

It's not that this is an independent element and this is an independent element. And there are many players in each one of those categories. But your ability to combine them all and deliver solutions, not just on the asset class or the efficacy of the machine and prevention of downtimes and predictive maintenance...all the way to user experience.

 

How relevant will be India's role in Hitachi's global growth?

 

I think that everybody is convinced at this point in time. I'm saying this sitting in India, thanks to the tentativeness of the global economic landscape. India presents itself as more stable and not just a pure play of export-led growth; where the input and output cost, the input of manufacturing will be influenced as much by competitive exchanges.

 

We see ourselves playing a very, very important role. I mean, I think 65 per cent to 70 per cent of Hitachi's economy in 2030 will be outside Japan. Within that, Hitachi in India can be a very significant contributor to the future growth of the economy outside Japan.