National Start-up Day: Vedanta Aluminium fostering a strong start-up ecosystem to Make in India

New Delhi;16th January 2023: On National Start-up Day, Vedanta Aluminium, India’s largest producer of aluminum, announced that it is working with nearly 40 leading technology start-ups, to collaborate with India’s rich start-up ecosystem and power the next phase of its growth journey. The company’s aspiration to be the world’s best and most sustainable aluminum producer is seeing it harness the potential of Industrial Revolution 4.0 and Web 3.0 for manufacturing excellence. Towards making the Aluminium Business a digital-first organisation, the start-ups are working in the areas of value creation, volume growth, cost efficiency, excellence in business, and ESG (Environment, Social & Governance).

This initiative is a part of the company’s Vedanta Spark program, a global corporate innovation & ventures program, which offers venture investing, start-up incubation, pilot programs with start-ups on various business cases, and venture-building programs with various universities to create a pool of new start-ups. From immersive safety training to the just-in-time supply of spare parts through 3D printing, predictive & prescriptive maintenance, asset reliability, and more, the company is deploying emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, robotics, power electronics, visual intelligence, and additive manufacturing.

Speaking about the initiative Mr. Rahul Sharma, CEO – of Vedanta Aluminium said, “At Vedanta Aluminium, we aim to reimagine the role of entrepreneurship in the manufacturing industry, as a catalyst of innovation. With aluminum fast evolving as the strategic metal for a connected tomorrow, we are poised for exponential growth, with the digital transformation of our plants at the heart of this journey. And therefore, we are working with nearly 40 leading tech start-ups who are bringing in cutting-edge technologies and their global expertise to enhance our agility and competitiveness.”

Pinak Dattaray, Founder & CEO of Ripik.AI, says, “At Ripik.AI, we build proprietary cutting-edge AI-based applications to drive meaningful KPI movement and business benefits. It is a privilege to work with Vedanta’s Aluminium Business, where we worked with the company to leverage the might of AI and improve the efficiency of smelters. We look forward to deepening our relationship with the company and continue to build disruptive products which are pioneers in the aluminum and metals industry, globally.”

Snehendu Mondal, CEO of Satsafeti (Mondal Ventures LLP) added, “As a global industry leader, backed by a culture of innovation and excellence, Vedanta offers significant opportunities for the Indian start-up ecosystem. Satsafeti has partnered with Vedanta to strengthen the company’s safety culture with our state-of-the-art computer vision technology. With this collaboration, we aim to unlock greater value in the business and establish new industry benchmarks in operational excellence.”

In addition, to foster a culture of innovation and infuse design thinking amongst employees to turn them into intrapreneurs, Vedanta Aluminium runs vibrant Innovation Cafés across its business units. The Cafés see employees and business partners come together to pursue passion projects on various business cases and crowdsource internal expertise and solutions for the same.

Parallelly, with operations in rural hinterlands of the country, the company also nurtures a vast ecosystem of rural and micro-entrepreneurs in the regions where it operates. Vedanta Aluminium’s expansive value-chain, customer, and supplier network have fostered thousands of MSMEs, some of whom have also gone on to become suppliers and business partners for the company.

Vedanta Aluminium, a business of Vedanta Limited, is India’s largest producer of aluminum, manufacturing more than half of India’s aluminum i.e., 2.27 million tonnes in FY22. It is a leader in value-added aluminum products that find critical applications in core industries. Vedanta Aluminium ranks 4th in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) 2021 world rankings for aluminium industry, a reflection of its sustainable development practices. With its world-class aluminium smelters, alumina refinery, and power plants in India, the company fulfills its mission of spurring emerging applications of aluminium as the ‘Metal of the Future’ for a greener tomorrow.