Transform - Siemens Innovation Day 2026: Powering India’s leap towards Viksit Bharat 2047

India is currently one of the fastest-growing large economies in the world, but staying on top requires a massive technological leap. At the sixth edition of Transform, the Siemens Innovation Day held in Mumbai on March 6, the numbers told a compelling story. To reach a $30 trillion economy by 2047, India must increase its manufacturing share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 15 per cent to 25 per cent. This jump alone requires $1.5 trillion in capital expenditure, a scale of investment that is rarely seen globally.

“Not too many countries around the world plan to spend $1.5 trillion on manufacturing,” said Sunil Mathur, MD & CEO, Siemens India, during his welcome address at the event. Mathur highlighted that while India has electrified 37,000 kilometres of its rail network, which is equivalent to Germany’s entire network, and also scaled renewable energy to 250 GW, the next phase of growth depends on industrial AI. “As the Indian economy continues to expand at a fast pace and industries modernize, competitiveness will depend on how effectively businesses harness digitalization, industrial AI, and automation to drive productivity, resilience, and decarbonization at the same time,” he added.

For a country like India that has over 20 billion smart devices generating a terabyte of data per hour globally, the challenge isn’t a lack of information. About 80 per cent of industrial data currently goes to waste. Industrial AI is a critical tool capable of harnessing this “treasure trove” to ensure India’s $1.5 trillion investment delivers world-class productivity.

The $1.5 trillion manufacturing mandate

Mathur spoke about the sheer scale of the opportunity under the government’s Viksit Bharat program. He stated that as India scales from a $4 trillion economy to a $6 trillion economy in the near term, the contribution from manufacturing must rise from $600 billion to $1.5 trillion.

“To do $900 billion of additional contribution to GDP, you need a capex requirement of at least $1.5 trillion. How do you juggle all these needs – productivity, flexibility, quality, and sustainability? The only way you can do it is with technology,” he said.

He further emphasised that quality is no longer a differentiator but a baseline expectation. To meet these demands while scaling, organisations must adopt digital twins and autonomous infrastructure. “You need productivity while also getting efficiency and speed; you need flexibility, particularly now in a world that is completely volatile,” he further added.

Keynote: Building an AI operating system for industry

The core of the summit was a keynote titled ‘Building an AI Operating System for Industry,’ delivered by a panel including Dr. Peter Koerte, Member of the Managing Board, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer, Siemens.

Dr. Koerte spoke about how data is going to fuel this evolution. “The question is how do we harness this data in order to unlock the value, that treasure trove of really making industry much more intelligent and much more effective? AI without data is nothing,” Dr. Koerte said.

He explained that Siemens’ strategy is to combine the real and digital worlds. By connecting every piece of equipment shipped to customers, Siemens aims to create a continuous loop of intelligence. This allows for the creation of digital twins where decisions can be simulated and optimised in real-time before they are ever executed on the shop floor. “We see an explosion of data coming from these 20 billion devices. The challenging news is that 80% of that data is today not used,” he explained.

Bringing precision with Industrial AI

A major theme of the keynote was the sharp distinction between consumer AI (used for everyday tasks) and industrial AI. “The big difference in industrial AI is that it needs to be safe, secure, reliable, and trustworthy. In industry, we have to rethink how we deploy AI. I expect an engineer to have a precision of over 99 per cent,” Dr. Koerte noted.

"For industrial AI, you need data. Most large language models today are being trained on the internet. That does not work in industry. You cannot go on the internet and download production data, design data, or engineering data. This does not exist,” he further explained, adding, “The only way we can build industrial AI is by doing it together in ecosystems. We can connect the real world and the digital world... we can become the architect of the digital metaverse.”

Blending infrastructure and sustainability

The summit also delved into the role of technology in infrastructure. Dr. Koerte shared statistics about water utilities, noting that some regions face up to 60 per cent losses during transport. By using sensors and AI to detect even the tiniest cracks, technology can cut these losses by nearly half.

As India targets 500 GW of renewable energy and doubles its transmission capacity in the next seven years, the grid requires a digital overhaul to handle the volatility of wind and solar. “We will double our generation and transmission capacity... we are going to have to double or triple the distribution network while ensuring stability. AI has become real across infrastructure as well and in our day-to-day lives,” Mathur said.

Dr. Koerte introduced the concept of Comfort AI, an autopilot for buildings that learns and updates itself every 15 minutes, cutting energy costs by nearly a third. “We spend 90 per cent of our time inside buildings, and 30 per cent of global energy is consumed to make us feel comfortable,” he said, highlighting the massive potential for AI-driven sustainability in both greenfield and brownfield projects.

From proof of concept to production

To address the challenge of scaling from pilot, Dr. Koerte recommended a customer-first approach, understanding specific industry use cases, be it electronics, batteries, or automotive, and building for scale from day one.

“The AI revolution is as transformative for this century as electricity was for the last. What matters now is bringing AI into the real world of industry—into factories, infrastructure, and energy systems. India is not just a key player in this transformation; it is a vital leader. With 150 years of partnership in the country, Siemens is proud to help turn the potential of industrial AI into real impact together,” concluded Dr. Koerte.

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