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Expanding market reach, developing future-oriented technologies and building a stronger team will be our focus, writes ASHOK RAMACHANDRAN.The population in cities is constantly increasing, and along with it a growing middle-class population that fosters the need for more living spaces and the necessity for a smart mobility solution for the aged population. This long-term trend increases elevator density and supports further demand for the most advanced elevator and escalator products and services.Future-oriented growthIndia is the second-largest elevator market in the world after China, with more than 50,000 elevators being sold every year. In this market, the growth is mainly from the residential segment and the activity and initiatives in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. The current growth rate of the elevator and escalator market in India is expected to be about 5-6 per cent with the growing urbanisation in the country. This is likely to get even stronger soon, with the focus on initiatives like Housing for All and development of smart cities by the Government of India. To capitalise on these opportunities and to overcome the tight market conditions and policy changes, Schindler India will be focusing currently on expanding the reach in the market, developing technologies that are future-oriented, and building a stronger team that can act as the cornerstone for this growth. Growth strategyIn India, we have our service presence across 50 major cities, which include our branch offices in 14 cities in the country. 'Leadership through Customer Service', is the cornerstone of Schindler India's growth strategy, and we are now actively working on expanding the reach and making our products and services more accessible. Also, to ensure the quality in customer service, we train and develop our employees for the customer engineer profile and avoid the use of sub-contractors. Schindler is the first multinational company to have both the elevator and escalator manufacturing facilities in India. The manufacturing facilities along with the corporate R&D Centre, are aimed at further advancing and establishing Schindler's technological and manufacturing capabilities to serve the growing market of India. We aim to help people lead a safe and comfortable life and believe that our technological innovations will play a big role. Constant innovationSchindler believes in continuous innovation and getting itself future-ready. We have launched various smart products and services this year, including our flagship 鈥楽chindler Ahead鈥�, which was launched in India in August 2018 and has received a tremendous response. Using Schindler Ahead, we can now connect our elevators to the cloud and predict when possible breakdowns may occur and fix it before it happens. We can diagnose the health of the elevator and its status on a real-time basis remotely. This will help in doing proactive maintenance and ensure greater availability of a safe working elevator for passenger use. This also ensures 99 per cent and above uptime. Adding to this are a lot of new products being launched 鈥� Door Show, Black Board and Smart mirrors that are, and all of these will assist in making buildings and cities smart and future-oriented. Apart from these, we are also working on breakthrough advancements globally like the Robotic Installation System for Elevators for the installation process and 鈥楧igital Twin' to support in the design and engineering phase. The Robotic Installation System for Elevators is developed to eliminate the repetitive, physically demanding work of drilling multiple holes in concrete walls, to set anchor bolts that give greater precision when installing guide rails and to reduce safety risks significantly in demanding working conditions. A 鈥楧igital Twin' is a data set that contains a digital replica of a unit that physically exists. It includes all the information of an installation about processes and systems that are needed for the specification, construction, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of the unit through its entire life-cycle. In 鈥楧igital Twins', all the actions and procedures involving the unit are coupled with the real-life product. This leads to optimised processes and shorter development times since the elevators and escalators that are to be developed can already undergo virtual testing in every possible form at an earlier stage.The latest in our digital drive is BuildingMinds 鈥� a start-up partnering with Microsoft is created to optimise the management of real estate assets through a software-as-a-service platform. BuildingMinds will offer a one-stop service platform for real estate asset optimisation, transforming the way buildings are managed in the real estate sector. The start-up will develop a fully-integrated, product-agnostic, cloud solution that improves transparency and operational efficiency by allowing building owners to centrally manage all their properties and service providers.Development at the corePeople are what the company is made of, and our workforce across India is our greatest asset. To support and sustain the growth and innovation plan, getting our talents future-ready with proper training and development at all levels in the company is our core priority. An elevator is not a plug-and-play kind of product, unlike other building equipment. Just as important is the design and quality of the elevator, it is equally important that it is installed and serviced by trained experts. Recognising the importance of the highly skilled workforce, Schindler India is the only company in the industry that has invested in four, full-fledged, state-of-the-art training centres 鈥� at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Noida, and now also in Pune. Schindler, in line with the government鈥檚 Skill India Mission, has launched the Schindler University, India's only facility to train engineering pass outs to become techno commercial executives enabled to handle major projects, communication and project management. We currently provide tailored learning solutions to our employees at Schindler University, in addition to the four other training centres in India. The university will be able to train about 300 people at a time and will improve the overall installation capabilities, customer interaction, and support. The customers, therefore, have the unique advantage of not only having the best equipment installed by the trained engineer but also around-the-clock access to trained, certified professionals for timely and efficient execution of the projects. This exceptional value is making Schindler the first choice of major developers and builders in India.About the author: Ashok Ramachandran, President, Schindler India & South Asia, began his journey with Schindler in Australia in 2006 as a Quality Engineer working on Process Improvement and ISO audits. He later moved on to become the managing director of Schindler Vietnam in 2012 and then managing director of Schindler Malaysia and Brunei in 2016.