Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on March 29 announced a new strategic initiative called L&T-Nxt, focusing on areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, augmented reality, geo‐spatial solutions and cyber security.
As part of L&T-Nxt initiative, the management of India's largest construction and engineering firm will focus on incubating and scaling business verticals, mapping the landscape, formulating the road ahead and achieving the stated goal with go to market solutions.
L&T through its current engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and manufacturing businesses has been deploying IoT, analytics and AI in the industrial sector by digitalising most operational matters such as finance, human resources, labour, plant and material.
"Having reached a critical juncture in its developmental cycle, L&T is training its sights towards accelerating topline and bottomline growth. At the same time, it is expanding its potential for value creation by adopting a fresh mindset and building a new structure ground up," the company said in a statement.
L&T is trying to transform itself on lines of some of its larger global peers such as Siemens, Hitachi, ABB and General Electric that are powering fourth industrial revolution called as Industry 4.0, with focus on providing digitalisation and automation solutions to reduce costs, improve efficiency and help industries to comply with rising expectations of quality, environmental and safety regulations.
“Disruption has become the new order and as we embrace new and frontier technologies. Our businesses are leapfrogging into entirely new realms powered by the tremendous benefits of digitalisation and analytics,” said SN Subrahmanyan, Chief Executive Office and Managing Director, Larsen & Toubro, referring to the sustained and concerted efforts of the company to embrace digitalisation.
“We are committing significant investments and talent into this strategic effort and are confident that this will be an enabler for business,” he added.
JD Patil, Senior Executive Vice President (Defence Business) and member of the board, sees new technology businesses and sunrise enterprises as prime constituents, with the latent upside for rapid and substantial value creation. "The era of cyber-physical systems is just beginning. With the lines between the physical and digital blurring,” he added.
