CXO of The Week: Mr. Rushendra Babu, CTO of Utthunga

Utthunga is a Product Engineering and Industrial Solutions company. It engineers industrial-grade digital products and solutions for industrial OEMs, Industries, ISVs, and Service Providers. The company provides software development, firmware & hardware development, IIoT applications, IT-OT integration, field device integration, industrial communications, security engineering, and testing services to global industrial OEMs and manufacturers.

Besides these horizontal technology offerings, their domain-based vertical expertise in Process, Factory, Power, Building, and Mobility domains enable them to function as a dependable partner for their customers across the globe. Utthunga has institutionalized agile practices to enable digital transformation for OEMs and industries. They operate with one core objective: to engineer stable products with a faster time to market

In a recent chat with Rushendra Babu, CTO of Utthunga, he talks about the Indian tech industry and what Utthunga has been up to.

What was your childhood like, and did your experiences influence your decision to pursue technology?

I grew up in and around Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh. My father was working with the state electricity department. We used to stay in the quarters of the substation. I witnessed the substation control panels moving from old analog systems to modern analog systems in the 80s, although I didn't understand what that meant. Looking back, I realize I was perhaps interested in the electrical engineering field at that time.

Later, at the turn of my graduation, IT was popular, and thus that was a natural progression for me.

Your career journey spans from teaching to entrepreneurship to leading technology at Utthunga. What has the journey been like?

My first job was as a faculty in a training institute - a phase that was both anxious and exciting. I was teaching individuals already in the industry and looking to learn new skills. This experience definitely gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to explain and simplify concepts to make them easy to understand.

Entrepreneurship exposed me to various technologies in software, hardware, mechanical, cloud, etc. The biggest lesson that I learned was the importance of having a goal in sight and sticking to it. This period also taught me a lot about my interests and enabled me to realize that my true passion will always be engineering and technology.

At Utthunga, I work with multifaceted teams, building large-scale critical applications and deploying them in the field. Most importantly, I work on real industrial problems and solutions, which has been tremendously exciting and a great learning experience. The journey has been incredible, especially since I get to work with diverse people, organizations, and technologies

At a time when digital transformation permeates all sectors, what drew you to industrials and manufacturing?

I am fascinated with machines and automation, so it was a natural gravitation for me. Moreover, if any industry needs to compete, then digital transformation is non-negotiable today. At Utthunga, it is in our DNA. We have the proper knowledge, skills, attitude, and access to these markets.

What is your view on the current scenario of industrial digital transformation in India?

The pandemic has led to an exponential rise in awareness of Digital Technologies and their impact on lives. Digital Transformation conversations are happening across mid-size and large enterprises, and solutions are being rolled out. However, small-scale and micro industries need to be brought into the picture, as they are invariably a part of the supply chain.

Currently, digitization and data aggregation is the most significant development area. However, initial success is critical to building confidence, and thus, identifying the correct problem statement plays a crucial role in the digital transformation journey.

The pace of digital transformation can be accelerated through measures such as:

• Designing a mandatory self-evaluation and competency assessment program for every industry, similar to IT or Udyam self-assessment.
• Developing a maturity-score model and linking it to productivity, innovation, and performance parameters at different levels. This indicator, similar to the CIBIL score, will facilitate merit-based borrowing and financial incentives from the government.

What do you think is the importance of machine communication and creating connected factories for businesses today? How can digital technologies enable this goal?

A good business always operates with the goal of optimizing production, reducing waste, managing sustainability, ensuring safety and compliance with statutory and regulatory needs, unlocking new business models, and improving customer experience. Connected factory technologies enable these goals by bringing transparency into systems and operations.

Various vendors' diverse hardware and software systems co-exist and operate on any typical plant floor. The ability of these systems to communicate with each other (up and down the value chain) is key to bringing the vision of a connected factory to fruition. A healthy connectivity infrastructure should be able to bring both non-digital, legacy infrastructure, and modern systems into a single fold while also being equipped to adopt other emerging technologies like 5G, Ethernet APL, TSN, etc.

Digital Technologies enable Machine Communication and connected factories with cost-effective Capex & Opex and also offer flexibility to roll out incremental solutions.

What is the key gap that Utthunga is addressing in the landscape, and what are the main products and services in your portfolio?

A major gap in implementing transformation programs is getting the right combination of operational technology (OT), industry knowledge, and IT integration. Utthunga bridges all these factors efficiently. Backed with hands-on industry experience in both IT and OT sectors and having worked with global automation OEMs and Industry SMEs, Utthunga provides unified solutions of international standards.

Secure and seamless data acquisition and aggregation is our core focus area. This strength is inherent to us by virtue of working with various protocols in the last decade. OPC and Messaging technologies are enabling this.

Edge Stack, Edge Device Management, OPC Suite, Device integration suite, Simulators, and Applications such as Enterprise Asset Management, Equipment Performance Management, Traceability, OEE, Maintenance etc., are some of the other applications that we are offering. The EPCC -E&I and Process engineering businesses give us an in-depth understanding of the domain and customer use cases.

We are also working with strategic partners and platforms to offer applications and services in Cyber Security, process engineering, IIOT, MES, Historians, SCADA, Diagnostics, and V&V to industries.

Can you give some examples of the results and impact that Utthunga has been able to achieve for customers?

In Industrial Solutions, our work primarily revolves around digitization, data aggregation, and orchestration. We have worked with companies in O&G, Power, Metals, Marine, Pharma, Battery Manufacturing etc., to digitize and aggregate data. This has enabled companies to integrate point solutions for productivity optimization, improved availability, improved QA, reduced wastage, pilferage arresting, etc., with ROI in about 2-3 years.

Our Product Engineering Services offer a significant reduction in Time to Market and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) when applications are created with our accelerators. For example, we could reduce the Time to Market by about six months with some of our solutions and reduce the TCO by two-thirds. This is possible because of our continuous investments in our IP and accelerators.

What has Utthunga's growth been so far, and what is the plan ahead?

The growth has been remarkable. We work with OEMs, ISV, Machine Builders, and MSPs on one hand, and with End Customers on the other hand. We are a team of about 1000 people, primarily comprised of Engineers and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) from Standards, Industries, and Technology. We have the right mix of OT and IT skills and expertise. Our expertise involves product engineering services, industrial solutions, and EPCC. We are partners to customers in various areas such as technology, solutions, and implementation.

We are working on technologies and solutions around Data acquisition, Aggregation, and Simulation, enabling the shortening of the implementation cycle. We are also working on point applications, ML, and Digital Twin applications for on-premise, Cloud, and Hybrid deployments. We will also be bringing cost-effective digital transformation solutions for MSMEs.

We are very confident that we will be a crucial partner in the industry 4.0 journey for many enterprises around the world. We intend to foray into Aerospace and Defense in the next few years and have an aggressive plan to increase our revenue 5x in the next three years. Additionally, we will shortly open our new office in Hyderabad and plan to augment our US and Europe presence with engineering centers.

What is your advice for fellow professionals in the space?

First of all, understand the solution's impact on business.

Each implementation is different. Plants operate with multigenerational technologies & machines, as well as several operational policies. I would advise all professionals in this space to thoroughly understand the ground realities of the sector they are working with. This could involve operator behavior, stakeholders, data availability, operational process, IT & Comm infra, security, etc.

Digital transformation will involve applications from multiple vendors. It takes several iterations to reach a steady state. Therefore, I would advise everyone to build solutions with open standards-based interoperability at the forefront.