Economy & Market

We can tailor solutions to local needs

Published

9 months ago

January 13, 2026

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AR Madhusudan, President and Local Division Manager, Drive Products, ABB India, outlines how locally manufactured, energy-efficient drives are reshaping India’s industrial future.

As India accelerates its shift toward smarter factories, greener operations and globally competitive manufacturing, energy-efficient motor-drive systems are emerging as a critical enabler. In this conversation, AR Madhusudan, President and Local Division Manager, Drive Products, ABB India, speaks about customised, connected and high-performance solutions.

ABB has expanded its local production of energy-efficient drives — how does this strengthen your role in India’s industrial transformation story?
India is witnessing a major industrial transformation. Across sectors, we are seeing rapid automation, digitalisation and a clear push toward sustainable, energy-efficient operations. ABB has been a crucial part of this journey for decades. ABB’s drives have ensured improved performance and energy savings in motor-driven systems where efficiency and reliability are essential.
However, the opportunity ahead is even larger as more industries sharpen their focus on operational and energy efficiency. Industrial progress today is no longer just about output; it’s about smarter, cleaner and more efficient growth. Our recently expanded drives production line strengthens our position to support this.
With this expansion, we are not only increasing our local production capacity but also ensuring that our solutions are delivered to industries faster and are customised based on the evolving needs of each industry, supporting this shift.
By building more of our portfolio in India, for India, we can tailor solutions to local needs, from harsh industrial environments to fast-scaling segments like data centres, water, cement and metals. This makes energy efficiency more accessible and accelerates the country’s broader digitalisation and sustainability objectives while supporting the country’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ and ‘Make in India’ programmes.

What makes the new Peenya production line a benchmark in innovation and manufacturing excellence?
ABB’s drives factory in Peenya, Bengaluru has long embodied the highest standards of manufacturing, delivering solutions with quality and reliability. The expansion and upgrade build on our rich legacy of two decades of drives production excellence in India.
The new line brings together advanced robotics and digital production-monitoring systems that enable the production of large batches with exceptional speed and precision, while giving us real-time visibility into every step of the operation. In line with Industry 4.0 standards, the line has also integrated sensor-based tools that guide and verify the accurate placement of components, ensuring every drive meets the highest levels of consistency and quality. To ensure safety and minimise manual handling, the line leverages robotics, streamlining the movement of assembled drives within the shopfloor.
ABB’s Peenya drives factory has evolved over the last two decades into a world-class, digitally advanced production hub. With the latest expansion, the facility reinforces our commitment to sustainable, high-efficiency drive production tailored to India’s fast-growing industrial needs.

How are ABB’s drives helping energy-intensive sectors like cement move toward lower emissions and higher efficiency?
Industries like metals, mining and cement are not only energy-intensive but also have extremely demanding environments. In the current industrial landscape, both higher efficiency and lower emissions are crucial. Systems in these industries often operate in high temperatures and dusty environments while managing heavy mechanical loads and long operating cycles. In such conditions, reliability isn’t optional; it directly impacts production continuity.
ABB’s industrial drives are engineered for heavy use in harsh environments. Typically, motors in a cement plant don’t need to run at full speed at all times. Drives essentially help control the speed of the motor-driven systems based on the actual process requirement, whether it is a fan, mill or conveyor. With this, industries can automatically reduce the energy consumed while ensuring improving the performance of the systems.

As India pushes toward net zero, what role will energy-efficient drives and motors play in decarbonizing heavy industries?
As part of India’s push for its net-zero targets, there is a sharp focus on decarbonising heavy industries like steel and cement. Energy efficiency is one of the most impactful levers here, and ABB’s drives and motors are already helping customers lower their energy consumption while keeping their operations running efficiently.
At the same time, as mentioned earlier, these industries demand solutions that can deliver reliability and high performance under tough operating conditions. This is exactly the sweet spot where ABB’s drives excel – combining energy efficiency with improved performance by allowing industrial systems to adapt their power consumption dynamically. It is a combination that heavy industries need today, and one ABB is well-positioned
to deliver.
Energy efficiency is no longer in the future; it is deeply embedded in India’s industrial strategy. Going forward, a wider adoption of variable frequency drives (VFDs) is going to be increasingly critical. As India’s industries scale up and decarbonise, the role of drives will become more strategic.

What key technological frontiers is ABB Motion focusing on to stay ahead in the sustainability and innovation curve?
From ABB Motion’s low-voltage drives perspective, we are consistently working towards making drives smarter, easier to use, and enabling more plug-and-play so our customers can leverage them for their specific and unique application needs. Our modern and advanced drives are well-connected, essentially meaning that they can send data to edge devices for local processing or to the cloud for advanced analytics, enabling remote diagnostics and improved visibility of operations.
With programmable logic controllers (PLCs) as part of our portfolio, motor-drive systems can be also paired with PLCs, which can actively monitor input signals from various sources, including drives. This data can then be used to make intelligent real-time decisions that can guide the actions of these drives. This results in more reliable, data-driven and cost-efficient operation of the application they control.
At the core of technological advancements are our people and partnerships. We recently also hosted the ABB Startup Challenge India 2025 to identify and co-create an AI-powered solution to advance smart drive technology.
Overall, we remain committed to delivering solutions that are smarter, more adaptive and are easy to integrate for our wide range of customers from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to industrial plants.

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Wonder Cement appoints Mahesh Singh as VP Corporate Brand Communication

Published

5 days ago

October 9, 2026

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Singh brings 20+ years of brand and marketing experience, and will lead integrated corporate brand communication initiatives at Wonder Cement

New Delhi

Wonder Cement, a leading cement manufacturer, has appointed Mahesh Singh as Vice President – Corporate Brand Communication. In his new role, he will oversee corporate brand strategy and communication, including digital and performance marketing, public relations, trade, events, exhibitions, sports and experiential marketing.

Singh brings over two decades of experience across marketing and communications, with roles spanning the automotive industry, agencies and entrepreneurship. He spent more than a decade with Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, working across integrated communication, media, digital, retail and consumer engagement. His stint also included helping build the company’s digital marketing capabilities.

He moved to dentsu X India as Vice President – Strategy & Planning, working across categories such as automotive, auto components, electric vehicles, FMCG, consumer electronics, BFSI, apparel and brand consulting. His responsibilities included media and marketing strategy, product launches, content, performance marketing and consumer activations.

Singh subsequently took an entrepreneurial route with Radiant Brands before joining Shriram Ltd (SPR Autotech) as Head – Marketing & Communications. There, his remit included brand and corporate strategy, communications, PR and ORM, retail identity, loyalty programmes and events.

At Wonder Cement, Singh will be responsible for bringing together the company’s corporate brand communication initiatives across digital, performance marketing, PR, trade, sports and experiential platforms. The role will focus on creating an integrated approach to communication across consumers, trade partners and other key stakeholders.

The appointment brings to Wonder Cement a marketer whose career has spanned the brand, agency and entrepreneurial sides of the communications ecosystem.

Wonder Cement, part of the RK Group, is a cement manufacturer with roots in Rajasthan and a focus on quality, trust and transparency. The company has grown to six manufacturing plants, and a cement capacity of 21.5 MTPA. With more than 2,000 employees and a network of over 5,000 dealers, its operations span manufacturing, distribution and customer engagement, with a focus on consistent product quality and efficient execution.

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JSW Cement commissions additional 1 MTPA grinding unit at Nagaur

Published

6 days ago

October 8, 2026

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With this commissioning, JSW Cement’s total cement grinding capacity has increased to 25.10 MTPA,
Mumbai

JSW Cement, one of India’s leading green cement producers and part of the diversified JSW Group, today announced the successful commissioning of an additional 1.00 MTPA cement grinding unit at Nagaur, Rajasthan. The commissioning marks another significant milestone in the Company’s growth strategy.

With this commissioning, JSW Cement’s total cement grinding capacity has increased to 25.10 MTPA, while its total clinker manufacturing capacity, including clinker capacity at its joint venture, JSW Cement FZC, stands at 9.74 MTPA.

JSW Cement had commenced operations in North India in March 2026 with the Nagaur Integrated Plant, comprising a 3.30 MTPA clinkerisation unit and 2.50 MTPA cement grinding unit. With the commissioning of the additional 1.00 MTPA cement grinding unit, the plant’s total cement grinding capacity has increased to 3.50 MTPA, enhancing the company’s ability to cater to the growing cement demand across Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and the National Capital Region (NCR). The expansion has been funded through a strategic mix of equity and long-term debt.

During the quarter ended 30th September 2026, JSW Cement has also commissioned the Alternate Fuel Handling System and the Waste Heat Recovery system (WHRS) at the Nagaur Integrated Plant.

Nilesh Narwekar, CEO, JSW Cement, said: “The commissioning of additional 1.00 MTPA grinding capacity at Nagaur is a key strategic priority for us and will accelerate JSW Cement’s expansion into North India. We look forward to servicing the growing needs of the region and contributing to the economic growth of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and the NCR area. I am delighted to share that the company has commissioned this grinding unit within the expected timeline, showcasing our project execution capabilities. Further, the Alternate Fuel Handling System and the Waste Heat Recovery system (WHRS) are expected to substantially reduce our production costs going forward.”

Concrete

UltraTech becomes first Indian cement firm to cross 2 GW green energy

Published

7 days ago

October 7, 2026

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UltraTech Cement has crossed 2 GW of captive green energy capacity, with renewables and waste heat recovery meeting 48 per cent of its power needs.

Mumbai

UltraTech Cement Limited has surpassed 2 GW of installed green energy capacity for captive use, becoming the first cement company in India to achieve the milestone. The Aditya Birla Group company commissioned 116.55 MW of wind capacity at its Inter-State Transmission System-connected wind-solar hybrid project in Barmer, Rajasthan, along with 10 MW of Waste Heat Recovery System capacity at Sarlanagar Cement Works in Karnataka.

With these additions, UltraTech’s cumulative installed green energy capacity has reached 2,024 MW. This includes 1,580 MW of renewable energy capacity and 444 MW of waste heat recovery capacity, together meeting around 48 per cent of the company’s current power requirements.

The company said the milestone reflects the progress of its long-term energy transition strategy. In FY27 so far, nearly one-third of UltraTech’s 76 manufacturing units in India have maintained green energy utilisation above 50 per cent of their electricity requirements, while five units have crossed 95 per cent.

K C Jhanwar, Managing Director, UltraTech Cement Limited, said, “Crossing the 2 GW green energy milestone is the result of a strategy we have pursued consistently over the past decade. Cement is an energy-intensive, hard-to-abate sector, and showing that reliability and growth can go hand in hand with a rapid shift to green energy sets a benchmark for the industry. With nearly half of our power needs now met through green energy, we are significantly less exposed to fossil fuel supply constraints and power price volatility. As we scale up renewables, waste heat recovery and battery storage across our operations, we are building an energy foundation for stable, long-term growth.”

UltraTech commissioned 430 MW of green energy capacity in FY26 and continues to expand its renewable energy and waste heat recovery portfolio.

The company is also progressively integrating Battery Energy Storage Systems across its operations to improve renewable energy utilisation and supply reliability.

In 2025, UltraTech operationalised what it described as India’s first on-site hybrid round-the-clock renewable energy project at Sewagram Cement Works in Gujarat. The project combines solar, wind and battery storage.

As part of its decarbonisation strategy, UltraTech said it has not invested in new captive thermal power capacity for either greenfield projects or brownfield expansions at its integrated units for more than a decade.

The company said its expanding green energy portfolio is helping reduce dependence on conventional grid electricity and fossil fuel-based power, while lowering exposure to fluctuations in coal and electricity prices.

UltraTech aims to increase green energy’s share in its total power mix to 85 per cent by 2030. As a member of RE100, it has also committed to meeting 100 per cent of its electricity requirement through renewable sources by 2050.

UltraTech Cement, the cement flagship of the Aditya Birla Group, has a total grey cement capacity of 210.1 MTPA and white cement and putty capacity of 3.5 MTPA. The company is also a signatory to the GCCA Climate Ambition 2050 and has committed to the GCCA Net Zero Concrete roadmap.