Page 46 - MMI- Nov-Dec-2021

that Jalaj Dani invested money “Our ability to combine traditional
in Addverb in his personal capac- or fixed and flexible automation is
ity, not on behalf of Asian Paints,” a unique feature, which, coupled
Kumar informs. with our in-house state-of-the-art
manufacturing capabilities, gives
Expanding amid competition us the flexibility to provide inno-
Kumar believes that Indian com- vative solutions,” he states.
panies have not really embraced
technology for their supply chain Source: Addverb Technologies Automation in the time
and not automated their oper- of COVID
ations fully: “When we started, The global pandemic has
there were only a handful of au- changed many things. Compa-
tomation players. All were for- nies are constrained by inade-
eign players including American, automation. As Indian compa- quate manpower availability to
Japanese, Korean, Italian, German nies are scaling up, they are re- manage their warehousing op-
and British. But their products alizing the need for automation. erations since many people have
were typically not accustomed At Addverb, we offer automation left for their hometowns due to
to the Indian conditions and had solutions that are flexible and lockdowns. To maintain ade-
little scope for any customization affordable, leading to their wide- quate social distancing and en-
as per the business requirements scale adoption,” he adds. The com- sure that their products are not
“The robotics and operations in India, thus lead- pany has since been able to build touched by many people during
and ware- ing to a considerable ramp-up and a world-class team of engineers warehousing operations, goods-
house auto- commissioning time.” and has bagged more than 100 to-person technologies such as
mation field This limited the adoption of au- customers, including the likes of mobile robots and carton shut-
has got a tomated solutions to a few large HUL, Marico, Reliance, Flipkart, tle robots have been picking up.
tremendous
push due to companies. These large compa- and Amazon. These technologies ensure fast,
COVID-19. nies were also reluctant to try Addverb is now looking forward productive, and reliable ware-
In India out new solutions since they had to expanding across the globe, housing operations.
alone, the faced challenges from the al- especially South East Asia, the Another factor is the rise of mi-
warehouse ready installed solutions. Also, as US, Europe, and Australia. It has cro fulfillment centers (MFCs),
automation
market will these solutions were expensive, established offices in Singapore, which are sprouting across the
be worth small and medium companies Australia, and the Netherlands, country to ensure low-cost, last-
more than could not afford them. already deployed its solutions in mile delivery of orders. MFCs can
`10,000 He shares that the company’s ini- projects located in Hong Kong achieve their performance ex-
crore in tial days were filled with endless and Singapore and is currently pectations through manual and
the next
five years.” sessions with its customers. “Our working on a project in Australia. automated solutions.
approach has been to educate the It is soon to open an office in the “The robotics and warehouse
customer about the benefits of US too. automation field has got a tre-
mendous push due to COVID-19.
In India alone, the warehouse
automation market will be
worth more than `10,000 crore
in the next five years. The ma-
jor players in the global market
are Knapp, Dematic, Intelligrat-
ed, Vanderlande, Daifuku, and
Schaeffer, to name a few. How-
ever, we have a wider product
portfolio than our global peers,
and our software suite is more
powerful,” Kumar shares.
Source: Addverb Technologies “Our want to extend robotics to
journey till now has
been
fulfilling.
highly exciting and
We
as
well,”
other industry verticals
he adds summing up.

46 | November-December 2021 Modern Manufacturing India