Wipro unit starts industrial automation centre in Bengaluru

Wipro Infrastructure Engineering (WIN), a subsidiary of Indian IT services company Wipro, has started an industrial automation unit in Bengaluru as it seeks to tap the $400 million manufacturing automation sector.

The Economic Times reported that the new unit will focus its services and activities at home and in ASEAN countries targeting industry verticals such as construction equipment and the automotive sector.

"We have evaluated the solutions and we will have our first customers in next few weeks," WIN's chief executive officer Pratik Kumar was quoted as saying. "[Our] objective is to see WIN Automation among the top three system integrators in the discrete manufacturing automation business in the geographies it will operate in."

The CEO further added that industries were looking to adopt automation services in light of rising labour costs and said that he expects the automation sector to start generating a market opportunity of $1.7 billion by 2025. 

Kumar further said that the company was already in talks with customers and was in the process of scouting for contracts.

Another top executive of the company, G Sundararaman, who heads automation solutions at WIN, said that there was a huge opportunity in the auto sector in India, espcially when the BS-VI fuel emission norms set in by 2020.

According to the report, the total market opportunity for industrial automation stands at $2 billion but the figure goes down to $400 million as far as system integrators such as Wipro, HCL, Infosys are concerned. 

Wipro has been increasingly investing in newer technologies such as 3-D printing and artificial intelligence.

Earlier this month, Wipro had said that it has signed a pact to provide IIT-Bombay with 3D-printed parts of an electric vehicle that will take part in a European race-car engineering competition.

In March, Wipro had opened a new metal 3D-printing centre in Bengaluru.

In March, it had picked up a minority stake in US-based artificial intelligence startup Avaamo Inc.