Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) the global leader in open standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C), today announced that Bajaj Group is using Polycom® RealPresence® video solutions to streamline its operations, reduce opex costs and enhance collaboration between the company’s corporate headquarters in Mumbai and Noida, its group companies, and six power plants, operated by the Energy division, in remote locations across India. This has helped the company to significantly improve delivery times on projects and reduce its travel and downtime manifold, going up to 70 percent in the space of 12 months, whilst also enhancing the productivity of its workers and cutting down on carbon emissions.

Polycom's RealPresence Immersive RPX room solution replaces in-person meetings and provides a true-to-life experience for Bajaj enabling them to conduct reviews & make speedy decisions. (Photo: Business Wire)

The Bajaj Group is amongst India’s top 10 business conglomerates. It has interests in a diverse range of sectors from power generation, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), and coal mining to sugar manufacturing, ethanol production and real estate. The group currently employs over 15,000 people across India. The company’s Energy business division, which is privately held by the Bajaj family, is in the midst of implementing 2,500 megawatts (MW) coal-based independent power plants in the state of Uttar Pradesh. With its power plants currently dispersed across six remote locations in India, some 1,500 kilometers from the corporate headquarters, its site employees faced challenges in communication and project execution due to their isolated locations and lack of basic amenities.

With Polycom’s RealPresence video solutions, ranging from Polycom® RealPresence® Desktop solutions and the Polycom® VVX® 1500 (business media phone with video collaboration) to Polycom® RealPresence® Immersive (Polycom® RPX®) and RealPresence® HDX Room solutions, Bajaj Group has increased efficiencies across its business units, namely for the energy sector, and enhanced collaboration across employee communications, business-critical processes and executive board meetings. Video collaboration has become the norm for employees of Bajaj Group who have readily adopted the solutions for its ease and convenience by conducting internal meetings, project reviews, HR interviews, and training across distances, in real-time.

Prior to the implementation of Polycom solutions, Bajaj staff and key senior officials were required to travel great distances for in-person meetings, which proved time consuming and costly. During the construction, operation and maintenance phase in the power business, quick decisions were required to ensure speedy project delivery times and enable high productivity levels.

Spearheading the video conferencing deployment was Mr. Kushagra Nayan Bajaj, Vice Chairman of the Bajaj Group, who was in search of a solution that could be used to avoid decision delays and help to improve efficiency and speed operations. Polycom’s RealPresence solutions fit the company’s requirements exactly, extending from the boardroom and conference rooms to desktop and mobile environments, giving remote teams the ability to instantly initiate high quality, ad-hoc video calls at the touch of a screen from anywhere no matter their location, and share content in real-time and record it whenever needed for playback later, saving time and resources while enabling greater knowledge-sharing.

The company has already witnessed increasing demand and usage for the video conferencing solutions and will look to expand the solution further across its various business units, providing equal access to the video conferencing facilities to all employees from management down to junior staff.

The complete solution is powered by the Polycom® RealPresence® Platform – the most comprehensive and interoperable software infrastructure for universal HD video collaboration – which provides robust provisioning, management, scalability, reliability, and security. The RealPresence Platform’s unsurpassed support for interoperability transforms islands of employees and fragmented communications systems into a seamless video enterprise, which makes enterprise-grade video easily and securely accessible to all authorized personnel whether they're mobile, remote, or on-site. Polycom recently introduced a rich new suite of open APIs that facilitate the development of custom applications and extend the value of the Polycom RealPresence Platform.

“Polycom’s range of video solutions provide the high-definition quality, multi-party, face-to-face meeting experience we require to aid project-related and corporate-level discussions, making it easier for us to reach out to our remote sites, or to be reached instantly, regardless of location,” according to Mr. Bajaj. “Although widely used in our energy business, video collaboration is gaining more acceptance in other parts of the organization too such as in our sugar, coal mining and real estate divisions.”

“In a power plant environment, frequent and immediate communication with corporate headquarters is especially necessary for Bajaj Energy to ensure uninterrupted operations and business continuity,” said Mr. Dinesh Kumar, CIO, Bajaj Energy Pvt. Ltd. “For Bajaj employees, video collaboration is accessible 24 hours a day, thereby reducing the risks of delays in projects due to lack of communication.”

A key requirement and benefit of the solution for Bajaj Group was the comprehensive product support provided by Polycom, due to the demanding nature of their business and the frequency for which video is used. Bajaj Group deployed Polycom’s Immersive Telepresence ImmersiveCare Services offering dedicated adoption services and ongoing support for RealPresence Immersive solutions including software updates and upgrades, advance parts replacement, onsite support and 24x7 telephone access to technical experts.

“Polycom’s comprehensive adoption services support was a great benefit for us, enabling us to start using the video solutions as quickly as possible, thereby saving invaluable time and resources in which we were able to increase our efficiency in daily operations,” said Mr. Kumar.

“Polycom’s business video collaboration solutions are recognized as mission critical to organizations because they remove the barriers of distance and time, empowering teams to meet, share and manage information immediately, and make decisions more efficiently. Polycom is focused on providing complete end-to-end unified communications and collaboration solutions to meet our customers’ needs,” said Mr. Neeraj Gill, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Polycom.

Bajaj Group has shown interest for expanded use of Polycom’s RealPresence Platform by integrating the software into existing IBM Sametime® desktop clients, letting users launch video collaboration sessions easily and intuitively from within familiar interfaces and normal workflows. Polycom RealPresence solutions offer native integration with IBM Sametime® and IBM Connections. The company will also look to incorporate mobility solutions such as the Polycom® RealPresence® Mobile for tablets and smartphones, extending video collaboration beyond the office and allowing mobile employees to participate in group or one-on-one video meetings on the device of their choice.

About The Bajaj Group

The Bajaj Group is amongst India’s top 10 business conglomerates. It has interests in a diverse range of sectors from Power Generation, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Coal Mining, Sugar Manufacturing, Ethanol Production and Real Estate. The total Group revenues exceed US$ 1 billion with a gross market cap of over US$ 1.5 billion. The group currently employs over 15,000 people across India.

The Energy business is privately held by the family and is in the midst of implementing 2,500 MW coal based independent power plants in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the capacity of thermal plants shall further grow to 4500MW. For this, a total investment of around US$ 5 billion is proposed in the next 6 years. Power purchase agreements have already been entered into with the State utilities for a long-term period of 25 years.

The Bajaj Group continuously seeks new avenues and potential opportunities for growth in India and abroad.

About Polycom

Polycom is the global leader in open standards-based unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) solutions for voice and video collaboration, trusted by more than 415,000 customers around the world. Polycom solutions are powered by the Polycom^® RealPresence^® Platform, comprehensive software infrastructure and rich APIs that interoperate with the broadest set of communication, business, mobile and cloud applications and devices to deliver secure face-to-face video collaboration in any environment. Polycom and its ecosystem of over 7,000 partners provide truly unified communications solutions that deliver the best user experience, highest multi-vendor interoperability, and lowest TCO. Visit www.polycom.com or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to learn how we’re pushing the greatness of human collaboration forward.

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