India-born Schneider tech head bets big on Internet of Things

Schneider Electric, a France headquartered global player in energy management and automation, would make "big bets" on Internet of Things, reorganise its research and development focus, recently appointed global technology head of Schneider Electric, India born Prith Banerjee, said.

It would give more autonomy to its innovation centres spread across the world including its main centre in India located at Bangalore.

Out of the five big bets, which Banerjee would be presenting before Schneider's 17-member global executive committee meeting next week, a key component would be Internet of Things and how the much fancied concept can play a disruptive role in conventional business models.

That's given as Banerjee has been spending much time and thought on ways to optimally harness economic benefits of IoT.

In fact, it was his presentation on "Six ways the internet of things will affect our jobs" at the World Economic Forum last October in his earlier avatar as its Accenture's managing director of global technology that helped him bag its current job of chief techie of Schneider, said Banerjee, who is now on his India visit for a conference in Kolkata to be followed by addressing a town-hall meeting of his R&D staff at Bangalore.

Explaining the way IoT can create economic impacts and disruptions, Banerjee said instead of direct sale of products and services, Schneider can sell productivity gains by installing equipments and solutions on lease like arrangements where the company's revenue could be linked to productivity gains and savings its clients derives from these turnkey solution.

"We see big opportunities for IoTs in our energy business including smart grids and large commercial establishment management systems where we would help companies move from selling products to selling outcomes," he said.

This is what Banerjee innovated upon during his stint in Accenture where he helped John Deere create a digital platform connecting smart farm equipment such as tractors, tillers and seeders with weather and soil conditions data, collected from sensors tagged to tyres helping it sell guaranteed crop yield rather than individual products.

"I would also be recommending ways to change the way we have been spending our euro 1.2 billion outgo on R&D in terms of budgeting for short-term and long-term projects. I would also be identifying focused number of big bets that will have transformative effect rather than spread ourselves thin. The third thing is pushing open innovation approach," he said.

Under the open innovation project, Schneider is tying up with about 100 academic institutes including some in India like the IITs and Jadavpur University in Kolkata.

"Industry-academia collaboration has been happening but in a piecemeal manner. We are now putting a big bet on it in a carefully choreographed way," he said.