"We Are Planning To Develop A Knowledge Warehouse"

A player in the metals and mining space, Vedanta Resources has its principal operations in India and also enjoys presence in Zambia and Australia. As of now, IT is a necessity for the company; however, the group wishes to leverage IT to achieve business objectives in the days to come. Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd (SIIL), a part of Vedanta Resources, produces copper in India and is the face of the parent company in this field. Biztech2.0 spoke to Jagdish Agarwal, associate GM, Business Analysis, Sterlite Industries, to find out the company’s plans on the IT front.

What is the IT Strategy of the Vedanta Group?

Our business is divided into four segments - Zinc, Copper, Aluminium and Iron Ore. They operate under independent IT teams with individual hardware and software requirements. We also rely on external support from various IT vendors.

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Right now, a couple of improvement projects are underway. One of them revolves around using technology as a lever to improve the overall performance of the parent company by sharing the learning of different group companies.

The IT strategy we have in place presently has been formed to achieve twin business objectives – that of setting up a ‘Knowledge Warehouse’ for asset optimisation and of using IT as a tool to improve the safety levels at underground mines.

Does agility play an important role in managing the business dynamics at Vedanta?

The Vedanta Group has grown rapidly over the years, be it greenfield and brownfield expansions or acquisitions. Some of the group companies are listed in India, the parent company Vedanta is listed on the FTSE in London while Sterlite is listed on the NYSE. As a result, we need to meet the compliance demands of varied environments.

IT provides a communication channel that links all our employees. We have almost 28,000 employees working with us in India, Africa and Australia. IT also helps us to collaborate with vendors and suppliers across regions.

What is the role of IT in underground mines and how do you plan to benefit from the Knowledge Warehouse?

The metals and mining industry is traditionally associated with safety risks. We have a couple of underground mines and the people working in the mines may not be IT savvy, so we have plans to use automated IT tools (that require no manual intervention) to improve the safety performance at those mines.

For example, consider our underground mine in India based in Rajasthan and our huge underground copper mine in Africa viz. Konkola. Safety performance has improved significantly at both these mines over time; however, we can improve it further by using IT effectively as a tool.

Coming to the Knowledge Warehouse part, we have a large employee base in the form of in-house teams, which work round-the-clock at various locations. Our aim is to have all knowledge concerning various locations pooled at a single location so that it can be used to tackle any issues that arise and to take them to the next level of prevention.