CIO & LEADER-Issue-01-April 2018 (1)

Cover Story
Sometimes
you don't see the
problem till an
outsider comes and
shows you a better
way of doing it.
Rajeev Jorapur
VP-MIS, Bajaj Auto
tion) at Bajaj Auto, who oversaw the
deployment, said of the implementation
that they chose Universal Robots
primarily due to the collaborative
nature of the robots. "The key benefits
of Universal Robots’ products such
as their compactness, low pay back
period, flexibility, light weight, costeffectiveness,
accuracy and their safety,
is what ultimately convinced Bajaj
Auto about the suitability of Universal
Robots for its standardized offerings,"
said Sawhney.
Universal Robots wasn't the only
start-up that Bajaj Auto worked with.
According to Rajeev Jorapur, VP-
MIS at Bajaj Auto, start-ups offer an
exciting model of partnership that is
very difficult to get from most other
partners. Their focus is on the task
and to make it happen. They are
driven by passion and are more entrepreneurial
in nature.
"Most start-ups are sharply focused
and they don't have width that you
expect with more established companies.
Thus, you must carefully choose
them with the purpose you have in
mind. We won't be worried about their
sustainability or how strong they are
financially. We believe we would be
able to handle that part," said Jorapur.
The automaker was looking to simply
the manual process of sending the
service coupons to Bajaj Auto every
time the customer visited the dealer
for vehicle servicing.
Jorapur said that it was crucial for
the manufacturer to carefully record
the timeframe within which the vehicle
was brought in for servicing. In the auto
world, customers must get their new
vehicles serviced within a month of purchase
in order to ensure that the product
has a long run. There was no way of
knowing whether the customer or the
dealer followed the process completely.
With this resolve in mind, Bajaj Auto
went through careful assessment and
selected GladMinds Technologies, a
cloud based start-up providing CRM
services. After the deployment of the
solution, the paper-based coupon
system was replaced by a unique digital
token system and was given to the
customer every time he/she brought
his/her new vehicle for servicing at the
dealer's shop.
Jorapur said that sometimes you
don't see the problem till an outsider
comes and shows you a better way
of doing it.
In 2015, the automaker partnered
with an IoT start-up.
At the time, a lot of manufacturing
processes at Bajaj Auto were
performed by external vendors at the
company’s assembly plants. A vendor
would communicate the production
details at a pre-decided frequency but
if machines could tell how they were
performing without human interaction,
not only would the manual effort
at collecting information would go
away and info would come directly
from machines and would be more
timely and reliable than somebody
communicating it.
“With this hypothesis, we
approached the start-up, who helped
us eliminate the manual channels and
helped us plan our maintenance in a
more robust manner,” said Jorapur.
In the last four years, the company
has evaluated over 50 start-ups, performed
POC on 10 start-ups and are
closely working with five start-ups on
fully operational projects.
“Most of our time is consumed in
conducting background checks, financial
analysis and performing due diligence
– that is where most of our effort
and energy is spent,” said Jorapur.
#When an enterprise and
a start-up can work together
on resolving specific
business problems
Organization: ONGC
Start-ups: Undisclosed
Outcome: Inculcate
innovation in business and
eliminate critical business
problems
Some start-ups are only interested in increasing their
own evaluation. You must gauge the motive of such
organizations early on
April 2018 | CIO&LEADER
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