In an interview, Damini Chaudhari, Vice President, Greater India Services, Schneider Electric, shares insights with TimesTech on how AI, IoT and advanced analytics are transforming asset management across industries. She discusses the shift from reactive maintenance to predictive strategies, Schneider Electric’s lifecycle service portfolio, and the role of digitalisation in improving energy efficiency, operational resilience and sustainability. She also highlights the company’s vision for future-ready enterprises in India.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: As industries in India accelerate digital and sustainability transitions, how is the definition of asset management evolving from reactive maintenance to strategic business enablement?
Damini: With the growing need for electrification, electrical assets are becoming increasingly critical, yet electricity is more unstable and difficult to manage than ever. The key reasons are the acceleration of extreme weather events, which adds new stress on assets; a misalignment between the growing demand for experts and their availability; the growing complexity of electrical assets, with renewables impacting power quality; and high electricity price volatility, accentuated by geopolitical factors. With all these challenges, there is a strong need to shift from a reactive to a proactive asset management strategy.
Proactive electrical asset management along the entire lifecycle is key to overcoming the challenges of electrification and unlocking its full value. Schneider Electric underscores the importance of proactive asset performance management across the full lifecycle – from system design and asset strategy to digitised monitoring, intelligent predictive maintenance and digital modernisation – as the key to meeting electrification challenges and unlocking operational value. By leveraging expert advisory to set a clear strategy, connecting assets with sensors for real-time health visibility, applying analytics-based predictions to optimise maintenance, and executing targeted, circularity-focused upgrades, organisations can enhance business continuity, drive cost efficiencies, lower environmental impact through energy savings, and strengthen safety with secure, resilient electrical systems.
TimesTech: Schneider Electric’s service portfolio – EcoFit, EcoConsult and EcoCare – covers the entire asset lifecycle. How do these offerings collectively move organisations from compliance-driven maintenance to performance-driven resilience?
Damini: Schneider Electric’s lifecycle-based service portfolio – EcoConsult, EcoFit and EcoCare – transforms asset management from a compliance exercise into a proactive, performance-driven resilience strategy.
It begins with EcoConsult, where we enable organisations to establish a clear asset and system strategy supported by expert system design and SE Advisory, ensuring the right protection measures and maintenance priorities are in place to enhance safety, reliability, energy efficiency and long-term resilience.
Next, digitised monitoring brings continuous visibility into asset health. Connected sensors enable real-time condition monitoring, replacing periodic checks with continuous insight, early detection of issues and improved uptime and performance.
EcoCare elevates this with intelligent, AI-based predictive maintenance that optimises schedules, prevents failures before they occur, and reduces planned and unplanned downtime. With 6,000+ electrical experts and 300 in-house data scientists continuously improving our AI-powered predictive models, we are the industry’s most capable partner for lifecycle advisory.
Finally, EcoFit™ modernisation and circularity services keep assets safe, compliant and high-performing, extending equipment life, reducing environmental impact and maintaining high levels of operational safety.
Together, these digital services are shifting the partnership model from fixing issues to forecasting them, from routine management to outcomes-based optimisation, and from one-time service events to measurable, long-term business value.
TimesTech: Predictive and proactive asset management is becoming central to operational efficiency. How are AI, IoT and advanced analytics reshaping decision-making at the plant, campus and enterprise level?
Damini: Predictive and proactive asset management is increasingly driven by AI, IoT and advanced analytics, enabling organisations to move from intuition-based decisions to data-driven foresight. At the asset and plant level, IoT sensors and cloud-connected devices continuously collect real-time equipment data. This visibility helps detect anomalies early, trigger predictive alerts and reduce unplanned stoppages a shift from reactive maintenance to proactive decision-making.
At the campus level, we aggregate and contextualise data across multiple systems power distribution, automation and energy infrastructure. Advanced analytics help us optimise performance holistically by identifying inefficiencies, benchmarking asset behaviour and enabling condition-based maintenance strategies that improve reliability and energy efficiency.
At the enterprise level, we use AI-enabled platforms such as EcoStruxure to synthesise IoT-fed data into strategic insights that support investment planning, sustainability objectives and risk mitigation. AI-driven tools can reduce engineering effort by up to 40% and improve operational efficiency by up to 50%, enabling leadership teams to prioritise resilience, agility and long-term performance rather than short-term compliance measures.
This approach is already delivering measurable impact. For instance, our collaboration with Capgemini across multiple campuses has resulted in a 29% reduction in energy consumption, accelerating progress toward decarbonisation goals.
TimesTech: The Capgemini collaboration led to a 29% reduction in energy consumption across 23 campuses. What were the key architectural and operational shifts that made this level of impact possible?
Damini: The impact came from pairing a unified energy architecture with a service-led operating model. More than 70 buildings across 23 campuses were integrated into a centralised Energy Command Center (ECC) powered by EcoStruxure, giving 24/7 visibility from UPS systems and electrical distribution to HVAC. This supported a 29% reduction in energy consumption and the transition to 100% renewable electricity.
The services layer turned this visibility into sustained performance. Through an EcoCare Membership plan, Schneider Electric experts remotely monitor Capgemini’s critical electrical assets around the clock and dispatch on-site engineers only when required, enabling a shift from calendar-based to condition-based maintenance.
EcoCare covers electrical distribution equipment and 3-phase UPS, while EcoStruxure Transformer Expert (ETE) provides condition monitoring for transformers, so early warning signs are caught and corrective action is planned before they become outages.
The transformation moved facility management from reactive to predictive and prescriptive optimisation. AI- and machine learning-enabled analytics through EcoStruxure Power and Building Advisor continuously detect hidden inefficiencies and recommend corrective actions in real time.
Together, digital building intelligence, proactive asset management and service-driven optimisation created a more resilient, energy-efficient campus ecosystem, turning sustainability goals into measurable operational and business outcomes.
TimesTech: Many organisations aim for Net Zero, but struggle with execution. From your experience, what practical steps must businesses take to translate sustainability targets into measurable energy and cost outcomes?
Damini: Translating net-zero ambitions into measurable outcomes requires an integrated execution model built around electrification and digitalisation the essence of our Electricity 4.0 vision, which combines best-in-class electrical assets, IoT-enabled platforms and advanced expertise.
A critical starting point is a clear baseline of energy consumption and emissions, with sustainability goals linked to measurable operational and financial KPIs.
SE Advisory Services then supports enterprises end to end, from decarbonisation strategy to execution. EcoConsult, our vendor-agnostic consulting service, takes this to the asset level through Assess, Analyse, Act: a system audit, AI-backed expert analysis, and prioritised recommendations on maintenance strategy and modernisation investments. Audits across 400+ sites over five years show where risks recur, and EcoConsult can help deliver up to 90% safety risk mitigation and up to 30% energy efficiency improvement.*
Capgemini in India shows this in practice: with an Energy Command Center and an EcoCare Membership plan, it achieved a 29% reduction in energy consumption and is transitioning to 100% renewable electricity.
Equally important is accelerating electrification and clean, renewable energy, the most effective pathway to decarbonisation. Digital technologies then turn strategy into outcomes: real-time visibility, automated optimisation and predictive insights help businesses eliminate waste rather than simply reduce consumption.
Together, electrification and digital intelligence turn sustainability commitments into measurable gains in energy performance, operational efficiency and cost management.
TimesTech: Looking ahead, how do you see asset performance management evolving over the next five years, and what role will digital-first services play in building future-ready, energy-efficient enterprises in India?
Damini: Over the next five years, asset performance management will evolve from a “reactive safeguard” into an autonomous and prescriptive engine for growth. AI-enabled digital twins will let organisations simulate scenarios, anticipate risks and optimise performance dynamically, improving energy efficiency and asset longevity.
In India, where infrastructure is scaling rapidly toward Viksit Bharat 2047, digital-first services like EcoCare are transformative. We are shifting from a hardware-centric model to “Services-as-a-Strategy”, moving enterprises from capital-heavy maintenance to outcome-based memberships. By 2031, the APM market is expected to reach $42 billion, with services leading the charge. This builds an energy-intelligent foundation that treats every motor, transformer and circuit breaker as a grid-connected resource.
Condition-based maintenance makes this tangible. Compass Datacenters, which builds data centre campuses for hyperscalers and cloud providers, deployed EcoStruxure Modular Data Centers and EcoCare services, gaining AI-powered condition-based maintenance and 24/7 remote monitoring by dedicated experts. Maintenance is triggered by actual asset condition, not the calendar, delivering a 40% reduction in intrusive on-site maintenance and 20% OpEx savings.
For India’s fast-growing data centre and industrial base, this is the model: continuous monitoring, condition-based maintenance and remote expert support. Extended Reality AR-guided maintenance, VR-enabled monitoring and MR-enabled asset visualisation will further amplify productivity, enhance safety and accelerate ESG outcomes, making digital-first APM a cornerstone of India’s industrial transformation.
