L&T's strategic initiative to focus on AI, IoT, VR, AR and cyber-security

Indian multinational conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, has announced its new strategic initiative, L&T Nxt to define the future of the organisation from a fresh perspective. The company says this move has been identified as a select initiative in L&T's five-year strategic plan.

"Disruption has become the new order and as we embrace new and frontier technologies, our businesses are leapfrogging into entirely new realms powered by the tremendous benefits of digitalisation and analytics," said S N Subrahmanyan, CEO and MD, Larsen & Toubro, referring to the sustained and concerted efforts of the company to embrace digitalisation. "We are committing significant investments and talent into this strategic effort and are confident that this will be an enabler for business."

In consonance with the expectations of a new age industry, L&T Nxt will focus on the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), lnternet-of-Things (IoT), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Geo-spatial solutions and Cyber Security and leverage the experience that L&T has gained over the years. The company says, through its current construction, EPC and manufacturing businesses, it has made one of the largest deployments of loT, analytics and Al in the industrial sector by converting most operational matters online, finance, human resources, labour, plant and material among others  into smart, affordable and extremely efficient solutions.

Having reached a critical juncture in its developmental cycle, L&T says it is now training its sights towards accelerating top-line and bottom-line growth and, at the same time, expand its potential for value creation by adopting a fresh mind-set and building a new structure ground up.

J D Patil, senior executive vice-president (Defence Business) and Member of the Board feels that the era of cyber-physical systems is just beginning. "With the lines between the physical and digital blurring, Industry 4.0 is being founded. We see new technology businesses and sunrise enterprises as prime constituents with the latent upside for rapid and substantial value creation."

The conglomerate states it is ideally placed to capitalise on these emerging opportunities with its large palette spanning software-to-hardcore engineering, which is backed by a strong technology base, capability development in some of these select verticals has been in the works under its long-term strategic plan. L&T's management is focused on incubating and scaling these business, mapping the landscape, formulating the road ahead, and achieving the stated goal with go to market solutions.