Every industry is now moving towards automated frameworks: ARI Simulation's Shravan Rewari

Delhi-based ARI Simulation has been developing simulation products for aircraft, naval vessels, offshore oil and gas platforms, cranes, among others, for many years. The $14 billion global market is growing at 4.5-5 per cent, whereas ARI is growing at about 20 per cent annually, according to Shravan Rewari, the company's CEO & Managing Director. Rewari spoke with Business Today on the company's business. Excerpts:

Q. What are the key drivers of this industry?

A. In aerospace, this is a given. The risk is too high, live training is hazardous and expensive. And going back even further, it's space actually. If you haven't conducted a mission and haven't been there, the only way you can prepare is to create an environment that allows you to experience and practice anticipatory scenarios. Then extended to airlines in general.

In defence, key drivers are - live training is expensive, and you need to have a full workforce that is ready to deploy. So, those scenarios, you can't just keep everything running, keep all your tanks and ships moving, etc. Neither can you keep firing away. The drivers are different, but the technologies are similar.

And there's another very common aspect across defence and civilian scenarios: how does one prepare for a contingency when something goes wrong? For example, in a driving simulator, one could argue that you could do live training on the job - you get a learner's licence, and learn on the job. But if an object came in front of you or someone walked across the road, then that's not really possible without a very high risk in a real life scenario. So that's something that's common to both defence and civilian areas.

Q. Which are the new or emerging industries using simulations?

A. We all know from the developed world that the cost and the risk of impact are high. So it turns out that they would prefer that machines do the jobs rather than humans. So if I see a factory floor, industrial workplace or a construction site in an emerging world versus a developed world, then just the sheer number of people on a job is much less, whether it's building a house or a metro or just the floor of a rig. It's a combination of automation - which is driven by less number of people - and the machines doing the high-risk jobs.

When we talk about airlines or ships or offshore vessels or some very sophisticated dynamic positioning crafts, or oil rigs, every industry is now moving towards automated frameworks. And these interfaces are coming up everywhere including in the medical fraternity. I can conduct an operating using a robotic framework, which is much more precise than the good old surgeon with his steady hands. Metro cranes, for example, these things go wrong because of lack of understanding of the human-machine interface. And that's actually our sweet spot in terms of commonality of process.

Q. Is much of your business outside India?

A. We export 75-80 per cent of our business - that's been our focus for the past 10-15 years.

Q. Which are the areas that do well in India?

A. We have a reasonable share of the marine market. We've also done a lot of crane simulators for companies like container terminals. One of the driving requirements there was - big, more powerful cranes came in. Suddenly the container movement and throughput required was higher, ships' turnaround times were required to be faster, ships got bigger.

What are the growth trends?

A. I have a theory that with the advent of headgear and Oculus Rift, and Samsung's doing things to your eyes, that's going to actually kick this market higher. Every person, even if you've not seen a simulator, is going to find very strong application areas in whatever they do.

Q. What's your biggest market by revenue?

A. It's all distributed really. We export to about 50+ countries - they are not necessarily recurring but we have resellers in about 25-30 locations. Some are one-off and are yet to be harvested. Some of the consistent ones are Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia has kicked in last two years, Algeria, Egypt, the UK, South America, Mexico. These are sort of more regular.