According to a top executive, Schneider Electric is creating its worldwide artificial intelligence base in India. India already makes up the largest portion of the digital organisation, accounting for 40% of the team’s 2,000 members, according to Peter Weckesser, executive vice president at Schneider Digital and chief digital officer at Schneider Electric. Over 5,500 R&D and software engineers from Schneider Electric work across a range of technologies and activities in India.
The French corporation has made it a priority to use artificial intelligence to increase value both inside and externally.
“We have built an open AI organisation, which stretches across the internal and external risks responsibility, and also this AI organisation has the biggest footprint in India,” said Weckesser.
The AI hub currently employs 200 individuals worldwide, 65 of them are in India. A year and a half after the company began working on incorporating AI into its products, it became clear that it needed to group all of its AI expertise into a single global AI hub. As a result, the Bengaluru centre was chosen. It has a chief AI officer who is now based in France, but according to Weckesser, this position may one day also be managed from India.
Hiring, he said, would continue, both for the AI organisation in India as well as the larger R&D set up. “My organisation not only has the biggest footprint running in India, We also have the highest number of new people we are hiring in India. So, we have a very strong commitment to India. And this percentage of 40% will rather go up than go down in the future,” said Weckesser.
Although it isn’t formally part of the firm’s sales targets, the corporation hopes to save Euro 500 million in costs and generate Euro 500 million in revenues with its AI programme in the medium future. Weckesser observed that “the pipeline of AI initiatives is developing on a daily basis and is beginning to have an influence.”
In an effort to make all of its goods more digital, Schneider Electric is attempting to connect all of the products and equipment to the cloud. As a result, clients can create cloud-based apps and they and their customers have access to the data. India is home to several of these platforms, product lines, and IoT expertise.
