Kolkata: A significant part of Microsoft’s $500 million fresh investment will come to the Kolkata R&D centre of the Baltimore-headquartered Machine-Sense, LLC, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven manufacturer of machine sensor and power analyser. This will be part of Microsoft Corp’s elite scaleup accelerator programme, initiated in February.
The company, co-founded among others by a non-resident Bengali technopreneur, Dr Biplab Pal, happens to be one of only 12 startups picked for this round of the scaleup initiative, which plans to invest more than $500 million over the next two years to help startups with go-to-market strategies, technology and community building.
MachineSense has already developed a patented industrial IoT system (IIoT) for predictive and prescriptive maintenance of machines, using electricity and vibration analytics. The company is now learnt to be building an IIoT (industrial IoT) platform for factory and building utilities that include electricity, compressed air, water, HVAC, vacuum.
“MachineSense is working diligently on the conversion of its platform to the Microsoft Azure platform and is being assisted by Microsoft. We are adding employees to Kolkata R&D centre to assist in this process. The company will then be releasing its products globally and once approved by Microsoft, Microsoft will assist in the marketing and sales of these products,” said Conrad Bessemer, co-founder, MachineSense LLC, adding, “Microsoft is spending the $500 million under this programme which will include these 12 startups plus others that have been and will be admitted under the programme with good-to-market strategies, credits for use of the Microsoft Azure programme and other internal help.”
At present, Prophecy Sensorlytics Ltd, the Indian arm of MachineSense, has as many as 40 employees and is adding to that count. The company will hire more technical and sales employees and add sales employees in North America as well. MachineSense is already offering its Power Analyzer products and is working with many Indian manufacturing majors, including JK Tyre, JK Fenner, Tata Steel and Proctor & Gamble with their industrial predictive maintenance and power analysis requirements, said Biplab Pal, co-founder and chief technology officer of MachineSense.
“It is the only company in its space, which has the ability to run analytics fully — both at the edge and in the cloud. The company’s ability to extract hundreds of features from sensor signals such as vibration and current, makes it an attractive choice for Stream data, which the third parties can use to build extra features in predictive/condition-based monitoring applications. It also makes the company the best choice for the third party integration in Factory 4.0,” said Pal. MachineSense will be the first in the Azure Ecosystem to merge hardware, highly refined data statistics plus advanced first party analytics, that can be applied to a range of devices right out of the box, which makes it an attractive solution for Microsoft’s vertical sales teams. Microsoft has been pioneering advanced security systems for industrial devices and MachineSense will be the only predictive maintenance system to benefit from this platform to date — which will assure the highest level of data security and protection for industrial clients — not only backed by MachineSense, but also by Microsoft.
Bessemer said, “Once its next phase products are on the Microsoft Azure platform and approved by Microsoft for security standards, Microsoft will assist MachineSense in the marketing of the products since Microsoft products are used extensively in the accounts already.”
