Before joining Schneider Electric Pakistan as the Country President in 2020, Humayun Akhlaq has served as Country Leader at IBM. Prior to that he has worked at Cisco Systems, Microsoft Corporation Pakistan, Intel Corporation Pakistan and 3M Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited in senior management positions. He also serves as the Vice President of the Management Association of Pakistan. In his role at Schneider Electric Pakistan, Humayun develops strategy and understands the requirements of present and next generation Energy Management and Industrial Automation. Following are the edited excerpts of his interview with BR Research:

BR Research: Let us begin with a background of your work and role as Country President and CEO Schneider Electric Pakistan.

Humayun Akhlaq: I am responsible for delivering on the long-term strategy for the company and ensuring that we continue to deepen our strong focus on customers and partners; develop customer-oriented processes, deliver innovative power and automation solutions and build successful relationships with our customers in their digital transformation and energy transition journey.

We drive digital transformation by integrating world-leading process and energy technologies to realize the full efficiency and sustainability opportunities for businesses. We provide an end-point to cloud integration connecting products, controls, software and services. We enable lifecycle solutions from design and build to operate and maintain phases through a digital twin. We deliver capabilities to transform from site-to-site to an integrated company management. Our integrated solutions are built with safety, reliability and cybersecurity for homes, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industries.

BRR: What is the extent of your operations in Pakistan?

HA: Pakistan is a growing market for Schneider Electric. The population is significant, at over 220 million, and this is leading to a fast-growing demand for energy. Because of this, there is a need to maximize our energy efficiency. We are working with partners and customers to enhance smart energy capabilities and address current energy challenges to help businesses manage energy and automation in the new normal through energy efficiency, reliability, and resiliency solutions.

We are increasing our investment in people in Pakistan. We are adding more people to our workforce. Half of our new recruits are tech-savvy engineers or white-collar professionals to service our two main lines of business. The first is the standard electricity-consuming businesses and the other is the turnkey projects, for which you need a lot of talented project and contract managers, engineers, and others with technical expertise.

This investment in our people is driving our expansion plans. We intend to boost our engineering talent to be able to carry on projects all over Pakistan. These will likely be major projects that will employ many Pakistanis and will drive economic growth.

BRR: Which of your products and services are offered in Pakistan?

HA: Globally, Schneider Electric has shifted its focus over the past 15 years towards energy efficiency, digital transformation, and sustainability. We define ourselves now as a technology provider that makes energy safer, more efficient, more productive, and greener in all our markets.

Our core technology, the EcoStruxure platform, is our IoT-enabled solution for buildings, data centers, industry, and infrastructure. With EcoStruxure, our customers achieve predictive maintenance and remote monitoring while minimizing downtime and energy waste.

BRR: How can the efficiency of electricity generation, transmission and consumption be improved in Pakistan?

HA: A smart power grid can help improve the overall efficiency of electricity consumption, by significantly reducing electricity consumption. The price of a smart grid is paid back over time through the energy saved by residents and the capital expenditure reduction by the utility. Indeed, clean and affordable sources of energy are a key requirement to effectively combat future environmental challenges.

Solar panels, for instance, are safe, easy to install, reliable and widely available. The opportunities offered by these alternatives should be taken up more widely as a priority for all stakeholders. Even so, adequate policy measures to create a level playing field.

Smart grid solutions are also playing a central role in transforming the power industry. By letting businesses know how much power they are using, the machines involved and the costs every minute of the day, you provide them with the necessary tools to measure and reduce energy consumption.

Ultimately, to successfully manage the country’s energy supply, we must be able to monitor it, benchmark it, report on it and prioritize it for the coming years. This will be facilitated by big data, artificial intelligence and other innovations enabled by device-level monitoring.

BRR: Given that the headquarters are based in France, is there a system in place for technology and knowledge transfer?

HA: We are the most local of global companies. We are advocates of open standards and partnership ecosystems that are passionate about our shared Meaningful Purpose, Inclusive and Empowered values.

Our multi-hub strategy ensures we can act like a local company when it comes to decision-making, reflecting the context and needs of a country like Pakistan. We also empower our people to move within the organization. We make this easy and possible through our Open Talent Market, which uses artificial intelligence to match the supply and demand of talent throughout Schneider Electric for job opportunities, part-time project roles and mentorships.

Moreover, through our corporate social responsibility programme - Access to Energy Training & Entrepreneurship – in Pakistan we have trained 6,200 underprivileged young people in energy management skills, revitalized 52 vocational schools and supported 2,000 entrepreneurs.

BRR: Regarding COP26 and climate change, how are you addressing these challenges, particularly in Pakistan?

HA: We are actively supporting global climate change efforts at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).

Schneider Electric’s Sustainability Research Institute released a major new report on how we could achieve net-zero by 2050 and limit global warming to the critical 1.5ºC threshold. Entitled “Back to 2050” and conducted with energy intelligence company Enerdata, it assesses the long-term impact on energy usage and associated CO2 emissions of changing social expectations and up-and-coming, disruptive technologies such as autonomous driving, decentralized clean-energy generation, and the use of more digital tools in infrastructure construction, among others.

We are actively engaging with our customers and business partners to help them better understand the tools that already exist to help decarbonize infrastructure, buildings, data centers, industries, and cities. What we need in Pakistan is to accelerate this trend by shifting the policy focus from being purely infrastructure-centric to being more consumer-centric.

BRR: Can you explain the link between energy sustainability and technology?

HA: Two disruptions — digitalization and electrification — can address climate change and protect our planet’s future. At Schneider, they are at the heart of our strategy. We create technologies and solutions to advance a more efficient, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive world for all. We work with customers, partners, governments, and suppliers to deploy these solutions and create a low-carbon future. The capacity to create a better future, one that bridges sustainability and progress for all, exists today. And we remain committed to raising the bar for ourselves, our customers and partners, and the communities around us. Whether we are facing crisis or calm, 2020 has taught us that when we work together, we are stronger for it. That’s what we are here to do: be the digital partner for sustainability and efficiency.

BRR: For a developing country with a growing digital footprint, what potential do you see in this industry?

HA: In all our markets, we accelerate our customers’ digital transformation, with data analytics and effective insights to maximize value and improve performance. Integrated and open software platforms give customers smarter insights that mitigate risk, optimize costs and increase output across supply chains, assets, and production cycles.

Our customers are looking for efficiency and energy savings. Our software is available on open and collaborative platforms which help them achieve this, by sharing data seamlessly with all the users in their ecosystem. Over the past five years, we have strategically built out and enhanced our software capabilities through a series of acquisitions, investments and partnerships. This means we can offer our customers in Pakistan a broad, deep, and fully-integrated suite of software that connects the physical and digital world, combining energy management and automation, to help change the way buildings, industries, and cities are designed, built, and operated to reduce costs and resource utilization. In short, we help our customers prepare for the future of energy.