'In Sweet A Spot': Saint-Gobain CEO B Santhanam On Sustainable Manufacturing And Repositioning For Climate Change
In this week's The Core Report Weekend Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj spoke to the Saint-Gobain CEO on what the company does to manufacture in India and the change being driven by young employees of the company.
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Mr Santanam, thank you so much for joining me today. So, you know, let's pick up on a story before we come to Saint-Gobain and what you're doing in glass and I'm going to get into the nuts and bolts of how you make things and what are the things that you make as well. So, you were telling me just before we started about your visit to your factory in Palagar and what you encountered there and it's an old factory and an older machine that you saw, but what you saw or rather who you saw in the factory with that machine was something that was quite powerful.
This was a visit to a factory and we make ceramic refractories for the glass and it exports 90 percent. It's a 47-year-old factory and I was taking a tour of this factory and the teams were telling me about the digital transformation that they were doing. There is one massive machine which was a second-hand machine in 1977 when the factory was bought.
Sixty-year-old machine, maybe 10 or 15 feet in height and here is a tiny girl, all of 21 or 22, less than 40 kilogrammes and she explained to me about how she's changing this machine, helping digitally transform a 60-year-old machine, putting in sensors, putting in IIOTs, putting in a kind of a new SCADA programme to improve the efficiency of this machine, which is a 60-year-old machine. And this whole thing of this girl, all of 21 or 22, 10 standard plus ITI, not an engineer, not this, a daughter of an auto rickshaw driver, explaining this to me and, you know, it struck me that something dramatic is happening in India. We are probably sometimes too blazed about it and we think that, you know, we see all the challenges that we see every day.
When I saw that and I had, I was almost, there was a goosebumps moment. There was also a moment where I was recounting it, I was actually choking. I was really passionate about, you know, bringing women back to work, especially in STEM.
And this is not an isolated incident. I know places in India where you have 70% women workforce in factories. It's not all over India, but I know one factory in Trichy, just a tier three town, where 80% of the people who are working in that automotive component factory are women.
I think there is a big shift that is taking place and women are coming in large numbers, coming into STEM. So for me, I think this is really a kind of, I don't know what you call it, kind of a moment where you step back and say, hey, that's what we are witnessing today.
And what this girl that you encountered in Palghar, what she's doing, it also represents the sort of industrial transformation that's happening within manufacturing. Absolutely. But it's being driven by someone who's much younger as opposed to maybe.
Which is right, you know, in many ways we're seeing that we have another guy who's heading our smart devices. He's again coming from a tier four town and a tier three engineering college. He's all of 29.
His father runs a provision store. This guy has got five patents. He heads our smart devices.
He's not from the privileged background that some of us have. Not IIT, not IIM, none of that. But you should talk to him about what changes he's bringing in, you know, combining.
And what is interesting, is it's not software, it's hardware, middleware, cyber security-enabled devices that can be plugged onto a large complex machine. He's designing them. I think, and what he's essentially doing is in every one of these in some sense is close to you making the machines do better, more efficiently, with lesser quality problems, lower energy consumption.
And you're seeing this happening. And I think it is, yes, are we, are these lighthouse projects? I'm not so sure.
I think it's more pervasive now. Just before you came, one of my friends called me and he said that he's got 200 machines. He makes PET bottles.
He's one of the strong suppliers of PET bottles. And he was saying that I'm going to be introducing IOTs and I want to use your company's capabilities. I know that you don't do this.
You do it internally. Can you help us out? And he's an entrepreneur.
So I think there is something that is happening. Will it scale up? That is really what the question that we have to ask.
Tell us about what Saint Gobain does today in a very broad sense. And I'll come to the India part because that's critical too. And so that people know what you do in Chennai or other both manufacturing and as well as R&D.
But tell us about Saint Gobain in a sort of, in my life cycle sense. I mean, I encounter it, whether it's an industrial or mobility, maybe space is not something I would see, but maybe other things I'm sure I would encounter in my daily life. And what's changing there?
And maybe some of those changes are being driven by all these young people that you've just spoken of.
I think Saint Gobain has repositioned itself heavily into what we call as light and sustainable construction, because almost all the products that we produce, which is glass, either for architectural building, automotive or solar application, or for that matter, the plasterboards and the ceilings and the others that we make. I mean, every one of what you see, partitions and everything, or the insulation, which is really helping you to conserve heat or cut down heat somewhere, or the construction chemicals which help reduce the use of cement and concrete and many others.
So I think Saint Gobain has seriously positioned itself over a period of time, of course, into a company which lives and breathes light and sustainable construction. Why light? Because we recognise that most of the products that we produce, they replace traditional buildings with these products.
You reduce the weight of the building significantly, and there are very good examples. And we also reduce the total embodied carbon, because we make that slightly more sustainable than in the past. And we also reduce the operational carbon.
So we really position heavily on light and sustainable construction. This is a large part of our business, and there is a 20% of the global business which is focused on helping industries improve their sustainability, largely industrials, where we have ceramics and abrasives and a little bit of life sciences, where we really help people improve their performance. And we are doing that regularly.
So therefore, we are positioned very nicely in this whole sustainability journey. And what is remarkable is, we will be next year 360 years old. And to be able to reposition ourselves in the context of the climate change, and we are one of the earliest industry participants in the COP.
In Dubai, we were the only industry representative in the COP summit in Dubai, because we believe that there is a need, companies can do this well, and companies can prosper by doing this well. So that shift is undergoing. It's kind of a transformation.
And I think India has a very huge role to play in that.
Right. Okay, so let me pick on two or three things. One, let me talk about construction a little bit.
I live in a building, which seems to use some of the things that you make large, I mean, glass, where maybe walls could have been once upon a time, and gypsum where concrete would have been once upon a time. I'm assuming both are correct, reduced by absolutely. Yeah.
What's the sort of transition that has happened here? And how fast has it been? I mean, I can see it in some places.
Is this something that people willingly buy because it's economical? Or do they see the benefits of going for, you know, light and sustainable, as you say?
Yeah, I think that this trend is happening. And large companies are really focused. A week ago, I was speaking on sustainability in a forum in Bengaluru.
And the managing director, I think it's Pavitra Shankar of Brigade. And she talked about saying that every new building that we want to build, it has to be 10 to 15% lower in embodied carbon and operational carbon. I mean, this is a builder in Bengaluru speaking.
I think that trend is now visible. In the past, the solutions were much more expensive. Today, for instance, for commercial buildings, it's a hygiene factor to have low carbon buildings.
And for large commercial buildings, it is also economical, it is not much more expensive. For the residences, we have not yet come to the stage where it is low carbon materials would be the same cost, maybe 10% more. But this trend is there.
And we've had some situation where people moved to full glazing, advanced glazing, to replace some of the aluminium louvres. Because in the CO2 footprint calculation, replacing that aluminium louvres, which are providing some shading, by going for advanced glazing product, actually helped them in CO2 footprint. So there is it's happening.
I would say India is somewhat ahead of its curve. When you look at our per capita income, I think the rest of the world at our per capita income were burning CO2. I think for a $2,700 per capita income country, I believe that our practises are much more green than countries at that stage of development.
So I think we have this, this is happening. And today, I think we have the green building movement, whether it's IGBC or USGBC or TRI, Terry's norms, griha norms. I think today, I don't think any CPWD building will come without fulfilling the norms of energy code, all of that.
So I think there is a big shift that is taking place.
Glass is something that one traditionally associates you with. Let me spend, if I can, a few minutes on that. What are the big changes that are happening in the way glass is made in the way, let's say, or what are what you're trying to achieve with it?
I can see how it's replacing things like walls. It's also helping you obviously reduce emissions and heat coming in or going out, depending on where you are in the world. So what's the kind of technology changes that are happening?
I think when we look at, particularly on sustainability, we looked at basically four buckets. I think most companies do that. I think we do sustainable manufacturing, sustainable supply chain, sustainable stakeholders, particularly those who are connected with our ecosystem of people who are installing, designers and others, and sustainable solutions for the customers for reducing their embodied carbon and operational carbon footprint.
Now in manufacturing, we have done today, I think it takes, just to get a sense, it takes about 20% lower energy than what we did 20 years ago. Even then, we were a benchmark. We've reduced the energy intensity in producing.
That's number one. Number two, we moved in the last year, we were the first outside of Europe to produce a low carbon glass, which reduces the CO2 footprint by about 57%. It's a certified EPD certified one.
It has only 43% carbon. We are transforming our process where in India, we use some 600 million units of electrical energy every year. By 2026 and the 27 first quarter, 75% of that would come from renewables.
That's your own renewables or sourced?
Sourced, because most of that is we have a 27, 26% stake in a wind farm, in a solar farm. We have equity owners. And why I'm saying it's important is this renewable energy today for industries comes at a lower price than your traditional energy that you get from the state electricity, both the discomps.
So for us, not only is it reducing the CO2 footprint, we're electrifying the processes wherever we're doing. We're reducing the energy intensity of all the processes. And I'll just give a sense of what we're trying to do.
We have a goal that we've set a base of 2017. And 2030, we should be one third less absolute CO2 emission. From your own production?
From our production, scope one and scope two. We're not talking about scope three because we still don't control that yet. I'm sure that we have some plans for that.
In the scope one and scope two, we have to absolute, not relative. Now for the rest of the world, there's a target, but the rest of the world grows at 200% per annum. So that means 100 becomes 135.
They have to reduce it to 67. They have to reduce it by half. Whereas in India, on a base of 2017, we'll grow between three to 15 times many businesses in unit terms.
The glass would be close to three. The gypsum would be close to four. Some of the other businesses could be much higher.
So which means for us to reduce absolute CO2, we have to reduce it by a factor of four or five. Because 100 would have become 300. 300 has to be brought to 67.
You know, when this was told to me as a target, Santhanam, this is your target. I said, look, what about it? We are growing faster.
You guys are not growing as fast. So this is a global target. Take it or leave it.
I was actually worried three years ago. Today, after three years, the kind of lighthouse projects that we've done in glass, gypsum, and every one of our businesses, I'm very confident that we have a very good chance of doing this. Even though there is a 3x increase in the volume, we'd reduce it by 33%.
That means our carbon intensity comes down by a factor of nearly five compared to what it was before. It's a combination of things, you know, energy transition. And India is in the sweet spot in all of that.
We're in the sweet spot on energy transition.
What's an illustration of a lighthouse project, let's say in glass or gypsum?
In glass, I'll just say, I'll tell you both. I'll give you the two lighthouse projects that we're doing. Glass traditionally uses natural gas because the temperature inside is about 1650 degrees.
You generate it from this. Now, what we have done is we have replaced about 25% of the natural gas by electrifying the process. Nowhere in the world it has been done.
Not by us, not by our competitors. The first one is in Chennai, in the world. Not one competitor has done this.
So 25%... The gas was heating or was it... Gas for melting the furnace.
Heating to melt the... And we replaced that by electrifying part of the process by heating the furnace. And we're talking about the furnace which is holding 2500 tonnes of molten glass at any time.
And it's a continuous process. So we've transformed it by using close to 25% of the energy will come from electricity. And this electricity will come from renewables.
What we have... Traditionally, I would think it's the other way around that companies would go. I mean, from electric arc furnace, for example, you would maybe go towards gas because gas was cheaper or more accessible.
In our case, we've done the other way.
Yeah. And this meant a dramatic shift in the processing. The kind of thermodynamic behaviour when you melt it with electricity as opposed to melting it with gas, which it has been...
People have been doing it for the last 40 years. It's fundamentally different. It's a technological change.
It's not like using an induction stove versus a gas stove. Just imagine that for melting 2500 tonnes of glass and continuously without quality issues. So this is one.
But there's a recent one that we have completed is we make plasterboard. We make about 100 million square metres of plasterboard. Every three out of five plasterboards that are made in India, ceilings, walls, every single thing comes out of our factory.
So few people realise it. And we decided that we want to make this scope one, scope two free. And we first chose our Vizag factory.
And there we switched the processes. Normally, we use natural gas for calcination, for drying and others for the plasterboard. We completely switched to a biomass.
Today, we use rice, which is coming within 100 kilometres of our factory, rice husk. And this is the Godavari Krishna belt.
It's the rice bowl of the country.
Exactly. And it's extraordinary. And then the other waste from one of the company, Agrofeeds company, they have a lot of waste after extracting the oil.
They were wasting that. And we invested 100 crores in that process. We converted that.
And that is now becoming scope one, scope two, zero. Zero. And this is the world's first biomass-driven factory producing plasterboard.
And these two are two lighthouse projects because these are things for us. They are very important. And what is interesting is these lighthouse projects are happening in India.
India is 4% of the world. Whatever you say, we are big, we are growing, blah, blah, blah. We have 4% of the world in terms of GDP, 4% of the world in terms of many things.
That's what we are today. OK, that we have potential to grow is a different thing, but that's future. But the fact that Sangamanch chooses to do these lighthouse projects in India speaks volumes, firstly about Sangamanch's leadership, but more importantly, the engineering and the scientific talent available in the country to make this transformation.
I mean, and when you get down to this, there is a whole lot of people who are doing it. So, we set up a Centre of Excellence for Biomass. And we weren't thinking of that at all in our R&D centre in Chennai, in the IIT Madras Research Park.
We have an R&D centre. Centre this. We know now how to burn it more efficiently.
We know that cashew kernel is more efficient, but it has problems of some oil that clogs up the boiler. So, a lot of things we have learned. I think, and today, in fact, the discussion that I have with my parent company is, can we replicate it in Europe?
Can we do it in some other countries where biomass is available? I mean, that is reverse technology transfer.
Speaking about replicating, you know, there's no sort of geopolitics and tariffs question. What's changing in the way you're sourcing your materials or were sourcing? And how do you see that whole space in the next year or so?
What is, I think China still is the world's largest manufacturer with a very efficient, high-quality base. Let's not for a moment even think that...
Including for yourself?
For most companies. I mean, whatever be it. For us, it's not a...
We don't import so much from China.
But you manufacture.
We do manufacturing, but we manufacture in China for China. We don't do so much of export. We are one of the few companies which is there in China for China.
For India's sake, I don't see the supply-strain issue for our range of businesses. We are able to manage it quite well because we are not so much dependent on products or raw materials coming out of China, like the pharmaceutical industry, bulk drugs, or some other industries, or the solar industry, photovoltaic industry. It depends a lot on the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem.
But what I see is a very big shift that is taking place is India is becoming good at medium-complex advanced manufacturing. And I'll give an example. The Palakkad factory, we have two factories, one in Tamil Nadu, one in Kerala.
Both together account for a third of the world's output of refractories that we make. And this has happened only in the last decade. And why third of the output?
Because we are able to make complex product at very optimal cost out of India. We do have factories in China and Japan, US, Europe, and all of these places. But the third of the world's output is coming out of these two factories.
And they are significantly more profitable. So I think this shift is taking place where advanced products, India can become a base for manufacturing. We have several examples.
We make coated glass, and we export quite a lot out of India. We have the largest producer of coated glass within our group for solar-controlled glasses. We are the largest producer out of India.
It started 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And at that time, we didn't even have a clue. And today, we find that we're very cost competitive, even compared to in Middle East, we have a 25% share in all the buildings, despite the fact that it's an open market where everybody from Europe, US, China, Japan, everyone is present there.
So India is becoming cost competitive in certain medium-complex manufacturing capabilities, even with all our challenges somewhere. I think this is taking place. This is only my example.
I know of another company, which is an auto component company, which makes cold forging components. It's called Super Auto Forge. 80% of their products are exported.
They are one of the most profitable auto component companies. 80% is exported. And they've become in the global top five in the world for cold forging components for auto industry.
So you're beginning to see a lot of such companies, which you don't know of, 500, 1,000, 1,500 crores, which are beginning to make a difference in the world in terms of manufacturing. But it's early stages. I think you will find 100 such companies in China.
I think we are beginning that. So today, when I talk to our entrepreneurs in many of these places, they have that ambition. They're no longer happy being reasonably profitable for themselves, for their family.
They have that feeling that there has to be something larger than just making a lot of money.
I think that was usually the case. And how do you distinguish between medium-complex, which you've defined now and in the context of glass or coated glass versus, let's say, more advanced complex? And what would that be?
So I think more advanced would be semiconductor making. It'll take 15 years to get that. That is really ambitious.
So you're saying anything short of that?
Yeah. So today, for instance, the big brother is moving into India. Apple, from what I understand, you'll have to ask them, has something like 220 lines in the world.
There are only 20 in India. The rest is all in one country. And their intent is 40% to 50% of that has to come out of India.
Every one of that will be complex assemblies. Initially, it'll be assemblies. Then slowly, the machines will start getting made.
And you'll go through that. But if you think that we can do this overnight, that's like saying that you become an engineer without having to do 15 years of studies. That's not feasible.
You have to do the 12 plus 4, 16 years of studies. I think we have to go through that. And I'm seeing that.
Slowly, I'm seeing shift taking place to advanced manufacturing. So I think it'll happen, but it's not going to happen overnight. But medium-complexity, we are really getting into it.
And the auto component industry has shown the way for that. And I know another company which makes high-temperature horses. This is a...
Inside automobiles or...
Automobiles, everything. Earthmovers, automobiles, where you have high-temperature fluid transfers taking place. Break fluid to engine oils, to everything.
This company started initially making all the... Buying everything and assembling it, which is labour arbitrage. Today, that company has 80% exports.
Two warehouses in the US, three warehouses in Europe, one in Singapore. 200 plus expatriates working for this company. It's a private limited company.
I'm not authorised to reveal that name. It's a private limited company, sizable turnover, $300 million, not small. And really rocking.
And they... Over the last 24 years, firstly, they were just buying the horses, buying the machine, buying the nuts, assembling it, packaging it. Today, they start extruding those special purpose plastic horses, advanced polymers.
They're starting to extrude that. They're starting to do everything. They do the machining of very sophisticated things.
I think it is underway. You will see this. Of course, there will be a lot of high-employment intensive, low-value added.
Low-value, maybe 15%, 20%. Still, it is not bad. Things like apparel, then footwear, all of that are coming, which will employ a large number of people from the villages, moving from agriculture.
But this is really... This medium complex will happen, because that is what will lead to. I don't think we're going to just overnight create an ecosystem, because you need a hell of a lot of work to be done for that.
If you were to extend that example to, let's say, automotive, an industry to which you also supply, what are you seeing there as opportunities in this, in the medium complex?
I think the auto competent industry is very advanced. And I think they have the capacity to really produce global quality, global scale, at a reasonable competitive cost. My view is, I think a large number of the automotive competent majors in India have been playing in the Indian gallery.
And India is only 5% of the world in terms of car production, 5%, 6%. And also low value, in terms of value, maybe 3% of the value of the car. I think many of the auto competent majors in India were very strong.
There are very strong companies from very established ones. I think you have to look outwards. And there, the global geopolitics is in our favour.
That is really something which we have. And then the fact that the EV transition is coming in, we can actually leapfrog to the EV.
That was going to be my sort of attached question. What is that demanding of someone like you as a supplier?
So for us, EV, there are two, three things. The car is changing. One, the entire glazing is changed.
And it's really heads up display, information on the windshield, very wide canopy. And again, the same lightweight, because you put more glass into it, you replace the steel or the aluminium, the body. So lightweighting, reducing the thickness, and importantly, in the battery management.
For instance, we make certain solutions for battery, where thermal management of the batteries, preventing the runaway heat development leading to fire. We make those kind of products. And then in the battery making, we make certain advanced ceramic.
We don't yet make that in India, but we can at that point in time and battery making comes into this. So whether it's in ceramics, thermal management of the batteries, or in the glazing where we significantly reduce the weight and provide a full-fledged canopy, because a typical glass, typical EV has close to one and a half times more glazing surface compared to a thing because they want to reduce the weight. And then this also has to prevent the heat from coming in.
So the solar control products that we make very well, all of them go into the EV. So I think when the EV cars is very small 2% insignificant, not even 2%. I think we just put all of that together.
And not all of that are also made in India. Some of them are imported and things like that. I think when it becomes larger, we will have a very interesting play and batteries have to be made at some point in time in India.
I think people are, Amar Raja is doing it, trying to do, I think Lucas is trying to, Lucas TV is just trying to get into it. So there is several stages. At every stage, you have several components which India can start to make.
Like for instance, the gaskets, we make gaskets, but the raw material for gaskets come from somewhere else. We can go backward integrate. What would the raw material be?
It'll be some kind of a polyfoam and I don't know the exact chemical equivalent. For instance, I'll give you an example where we today make a special material for your car steering gear for it to be very smooth. We make bearings made out of engineered polymers.
In the past, we used to buy the raw material for the engineered polymers from Japan or for Germany and things like that. Today we procure those polymers from India and we are able to produce those polymers because there are very good companies in make the polymer stock. Then from that, we engineer it with certain laminations and others.
Every time you open your car or your front seat, if it is slightly more cars going up and down, you use our components. They're all polymer bearings and others which we make. I think there over the last decade, we have really localised the supply chain to about 80%.
Please, we are a good example of many companies which are doing this. It's not that we are special, we are good, but there are many solid companies doing this. How do we?
Once you enter, then you slowly say, how can I add value within India itself? I think India is in the right place for this.
Talk to us a little about your R&D centre. You talked about this. One of your colleagues who you said has so many patents.
These are all global patents. What's on your plate right now? Maybe as you go into 2025.
Correct. Our R&D centre, we moved into the IIT Madras Research Park ecosystem. I don't know whether you have ever been there.
I've been to IIT Madras.
Have you been to the research park?
I was about to because I met a colleague of yours, but I couldn't on that particular day. I was at the invitation of Ashok, Professor Jhunjhunwala.
I think you should do that because I think they're doing something transformative. Basically, a large number of tech and deep tech startups, I think close to 200 are there. We are located there.
We are an anchor client. We came in there in 2015. We have roughly about 300 scientists there.
About 60, 70 of them are PhDs, masters, and high quality background. Many who have returned from overseas stints. Basically, we focused on light and sustainable construction for hot and humid climates, hot, humid, dusty environment, which is really what most of the tropical countries would be.
How do we really look at that? We do two types of solutions. One is sustainability.
We put 150 euro per tonne of carbon. Supposing I want to introduce a new product, if it reduces the embodied carbon or the carbon footprint for the customer, we put 150 euro per tonne as a value. So, that helps us to innovate a new product.
So far, we have about 250 patents there. Last year, we did 43 patents. One out of 10 patents globally that Semi Urban does comes out of that research centre that we have in Chennai.
And we've just begun. I really believe that the can become double in terms of its capability in the coming years because a talent pool is available, because you're able to get motivated talent who are inspired to work, which is not always easy for a company like us in Europe or in the US. To get scientific talent for our kind of industries in these countries is a big challenge.
How do they, I mean, and that's really sort of links to the next question, which is that young PhDs join you. And how do they sync with something which is, let's say, a cutting-edge Saint-Gobain project, maybe in glass or abrasives or automotive components?
You'd be very surprised. I can't tell the name of the client. It was a global German major.
And we're doing an extremely interesting EV transition. And that involved completely doing the glazing for them, completely. And this has quite a lot of glazing, lighting, and solar control and acoustics combined.
Our teams from Chennai play a very important role as part of the global project. The simulation, the acoustic simulation, the light and glass capabilities, many of that, and these are done by people who are in the late 20s or early 30s. And I think what the digitalisation of both science and technology as well as innovation has done is, it's really democratised it.
It's no longer a big challenge. You know, for my own home, I had a bit of a challenge because it's covered with glazing and it's double height, my living room. But both me and my architect goofed up badly.
The acoustic was bad. So it was 22 by 22 feet and 22 feet height, double height. But the acoustics was bad.
It is brilliant to sit, but the acoustics was bad. My wife was just, you know, saying…
You couldn't be sitting outside on the…
We should sit, but I think we should look at this cage from outside a lot from inside. And so I asked our research centre to do the simulation. And they did the simulation and then that it had, and this was done by an young PhD student.
And they didn't send any of the senior people because they were afraid that if the simulation goes bad. So they sent the youngest girl with 27 or 28, just from a PhD. She did the simulation.
She showed that currently there is the echo of 5.2 seconds. It's called reverberation decay time. Step by step, we can bring it down to 0.7. And she gave us all the products and solutions and how they have to be placed, what has to be done, blah, blah, blah, blah. And my wife didn't believe in it because she said that, look, you guys are just taking us… all of that stuff. And finally, we went through all the prescription by this girl who's 28 year old, acoustics and building sciences girl.
First time she's doing something like this. And finally, the result is 0.69. And today, it's incredible. So my wife swears by our company.
For the first time, I won an argument with her. So it's that. And I think the tools are available.
We have all the equipment that are needed. And we have access to IIT Madras, where you have atomic probe microscopes and others, which are when we can probe something which I think our parent company may not have access in Europe, because we have that. With that and with the jubilative knowledge that we have, we're able to do things faster.
I think that is really what is happening. And you will see that the GCC story, a lot of that is that. It is not arbitraging just the cost.
It starts with cost arbitrage, but it is today talent and skill available and trying to push innovation. So I'm seeing this. I'm seeing this steadily, whether it is on use of tools where you're able to pull together.
And I was this morning sitting in the centre, and they were doing an AI tool, which in Europe, they said it'll take a month. And they did that in one day. It's that.
And I think there is a lot of this that's coming together. Coming together a very solid base of understanding of fundamental sciences, good equipment, good linkages with scientific labs, and bright young mind unafraid. I think this is the combination that is beginning to work.
And you will see more and more output coming out of that. You'll see that in many ways. And I'll give an example.
There is a process that we have where we fuse zirconia and make very high density refractories. We don't do diamond, but this is for our furnace lining. And they have a density of 5 plus, and they have to withstand 15, 16 years without cracking.
And this is a process we have invented globally. In France, we invented it. And it's a very steady state process.
A team of young guys with AI knowledge, IOT, camera that looks into the process. They modified the process and they achieved a reduction of 7% in energy in a very stable, stable process to do 7% improvement. It's like you take your car and somebody comes and tweaks it and says that it gives you 7%.
No, we don't anymore have the carburetor, but I'm just saying you change it. You have a very good car. I'd say I'm doing something.
I'm putting some software here, camera here, and you get the same performances, but you have 7% less. I think, and this is a guy who is an engineer with some seven or eight years, but the learning comes from we have a digital twin project globally. He adopted that, used the tools here, and we had access to the factory to be able to experiment.
And he showed that 7% worldwide. And we have seven or eight factories worldwide. And this digital twin project is going to be replicated in other countries.
So, there is a lot of, there's a whole body of scientific knowledge available globally. But I think thanks to digitalisation, thanks to really bright, young minds, unafraid, I think we're able to combine that well and frugally. So, I think this is happening.
We are no longer, I hate the word Jukart. I don't think we are doing Jukart. I think we're doing genuine advancement in science, leveraging what is already existing.
Last question then, and let me go back to where we started. So, and maybe it's a bit of a policy question as well. So, you talked about this young girl you met who comes from a somewhat economically disadvantaged background, but she's an ITI.
She's not even an, she's not an engineer, but an ITI also suggests that you can be quite smart even if you're not a degree engineer. Correct. Working on a shop floor, to get to that shop floor, it must be some challenge for this person and work there all day and go back.
What is it that we can do as a country to make sure that more such young people, including women, join the manufacturing workforce and progress?
So, I think it is true that, you know, there is very small percentage of the manufacturing women are in place, even though, firstly, as companies, we have to make it very attractive. Our original factory, glass factory, if a woman had to go for a break, she had to walk 400 metres. That was not the case.
So, we have to change internally our policies. We really make it much more comfortable for a woman to work. There is, there's a whole lot of work environment, and also, and also training of our middle level managers to be able to understand how to work with women colleagues.
I think many good companies are doing it. That's one of the reasons why we won that STEM award. It is not because we have more number of people, but because we have enabling factors.
I think, secondly, companies with their recruiting. Today, we have a rule that any person whom we recruit, if we are recruiting 10, we want four of them to be women. And we are earmarking specific positions where women only will be there.
And we want women only manufacturing, you know, some lines which are women only. So, there are some more states are now made it easier. Today, women can work in three shifts.
So, what would be needed is some of the more advanced states, which are more progressive. I think what they have to do is that how do I make it easier for women to work, because their families would be worried. Look, this girl, she's from Palakkad.
But if I have asked her to come and work in Chennai, I think her parents would have a challenge. So, we need specialised accommodation and many others. And I think now some of the progressive states are saying that we're going to follow the Chinese model where we allow dormitory accommodation.
And dormitory accommodation for women can make a dramatic difference. Safe dormitory accommodation, close transport within large hubs, industrial hubs, that could be this. Third is, I think there are lots of, let's say that we today have this, the national internship.
We can actually say that if the company, I think that's a very good policy, the prime ministeral internship. I think it's early days, but I think it has a good chance of, it'll take place. We are looking at it very seriously.
We are one of the, I think, the 50 or the 100 people who have signed it early on. But I think there we can interpret saying that if you're able to take a woman, that's a significant improvement that we can make. So, I think there is a lot of policy changes.
There's a lot of infrastructure improvement. Companies have to have a much more enabling policy to have more women. And I think if we are able to do that, what it'll do is we're going to use, look today, 50% of our higher education is women.
If we are not using them, and if the total number of people who are employed, women employed in manufacturing is low, we have to change that. I think companies, infrastructure, some policy enablers, all of these can come together. I think we are in the right.
And I know, I think I mentioned to you, I know of a company which has, we have converted our mirror line into 100% women only. Three shifts, mirrors, it's just an ironical thing that we are, the mirrors. So, we produce something like how much?
Five million square metres. 50 million square feet of mirrors in Chennai. The entire thing is from, the line is headed by a woman, engineers are women, line of people are running, the technicians are running, the maintenance, everything is women.
And it won an award as, because we completely transformed, we had to do. There's another thing that I forgot to mention. We had to change our factories.
We can't have a factory which is designed for a man. Ergonomics of the factories have to be completely changed. So, we have done that in our new factory in Gujarat, where we are saying that in the future it will be 50% women.
So, what we are trying to do is that we are trying to make sure that the assembly height is slightly four inches lower, three inches lower. They have more kobos and others for helping them to handle heavy weight. So, we need a lot of ergonomics improvements that we are doing.
So, companies have to do a lot. Companies have to do recruitment, to training, to changing ergonomics. Infrastructure, state government has to say, look, we make it better for you.
And if the incentivisation comes from the central government in the form of, if you use more interns, women interns, I think it'll change. And they don't have to necessarily be only in apparel or assembly jobs. Assembly jobs are already there.
I mean, if you take the iPhone assembly in for the Apple, Bangalore or Hosu, 70% of them are women. Foxconn is 70% women. That's a natural thing, but I think we need to get them to it.
We have women forklift. There is a company called Triveni Earthmovers.
Triveni Engineering, the same company? No, different.
It's first generation coming from Salem. They do contract mining. Guess where they work?
They work in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa. They are from Salem. First generation entrepreneurs.
They have 20% of their workforce of 7,000 women. And there is a woman who is driving a 325 tonne earthmover. 325 metric tonne.
The biggest JCP that you see on the road is two tonnes or three tonnes. She's driving the 325. This company said that I'm going to use the Adivasi women to transform the way they work, because they find them very reliable.
So I think this is the kind of thing, apart from all of this, we have to make that women-friendly many of our jobs. It's a process underway.
That's very inspiring for those who are watching and will watch, I'm sure. Thank you very much for speaking with me, Mr. Santanam.
Thank you. It was wonderful. And I think you have an important task of spreading this message.
There's something interesting happening in India. In many front, be it on sustainability, be it on productivity, be it on women in the workforce, something interesting is happening. I think many people have to believe that.
And I think you will see this transition taking place much more faster than...
