A water purifier has traditionally been judged by what it delivers at the tap. Increasingly, its value may also lie in what it tells its manufacturer: how a household uses it, when its filters need replacing, what water quality a customer prefers, and how the next generation of products should be designed.
For Kent RO Systems, whose businesses now span water purifiers, kitchen appliances, Kuhl BLDC fans, and Kent New Energy’s lithium batteries and hybrid inverters, that shift represents a much larger opportunity than predictive maintenance. It points towards a business in which connected products generate real-time intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates product development, and automation reshapes everything from customer service to supply-chain planning.
“The moment your product gets installed, you start generating data,” says Dheeraj Muku, Head of Technology, Kent RO Systems. That data, he argues, can create a continuous feedback loop between the product in the market and the business designing, manufacturing and servicing it.
The ambition is to move beyond selling appliances towards delivering more personalised experiences and, eventually, service-led business models.
When the product becomes a data source
The connected appliance is emerging as a new interface between manufacturers and customers. Through Internet of Things (IoT) technology, Kent can capture product usage data and explore applications ranging from predictive maintenance to customised water quality and product development. Such data is collected with the customer’s consent and handled in line with India’s data-protection requirements.
Imagine a customer wanting a different mineral balance or an alert before a filter needs replacement. Connected technology could make such preferences easier to accommodate, while giving the manufacturer a clearer understanding of actual usage patterns.
It could also give customers greater confidence. If they can see performance parameters through a mobile application, they can verify for themselves that the product is delivering what it should.
This matters in a market where consumers increasingly compare products online and expect a compelling reason to pay a premium. Muku believes personalisation will become a differentiator as manufacturers move away from one-size-fits-all products.
The longer-term possibility is a shift from ownership towards outcomes: customers paying for a service, such as access to purified water, rather than thinking primarily about the appliance itself. Muku says this model has yet to gain traction but could eventually become more relevant.
Kent has already put connected products to work in its new energy business. Every Kent hybrid inverter ships with a 4G data logger connected to Kent CentCom, which lets installation partners see the live status of every inverter they install and change its settings remotely, with the data held on Kent’s servers in India. Within the CentCom app, Kent Ojas, a patented AI voice assistant, lets service technicians change inverter settings simply by speaking, in any of nine Indian languages.
Automation changes the economics
The same philosophy is reshaping Kent’s internal operations. Muku says the company began exploring AI in 2021, before the public launch of ChatGPT in 2022, initially looking at speech-to-text, text-to-speech and customer engagement. It subsequently expanded automation across enterprise applications and workflows.
Automation has also taken over much of the repetitive work involved in moving and reformatting data. Tasks such as extracting information, transforming it, and uploading it into other systems, which once occupied a sizeable team, are now handled by robotic process automation (RPA) without routine human intervention, freeing those people for higher-value work.
The company has automated approximately 35 scripted, repetitive use cases through RPA. Its approach is deliberate: automate stable processes that follow predictable rules, retain human supervision where judgement or validation is necessary, and remain cautious about giving AI autonomous control over financial transactions and core systems of record.
For Muku, the objective is not simply to reduce headcount. It is to expand what the organisation can accomplish with its existing capabilities.
Cloud frees technology teams to build
Kent’s cloud strategy has helped create the foundation for that shift. The company has moved its applications away from an in-house data-centre model towards a multi-cloud environment.
Muku points to more stable applications, better availability and easier integration with external partners as important outcomes. Cloud has also reduced the operational burden of maintaining infrastructure, freeing technology teams to concentrate on innovation rather than routine upkeep.
One example is online reputation management. Kent had used a third-party product before deciding to build its own application. Muku says the resulting solution is more intelligent because AI is embedded in its backend. He also notes that development cycles have shortened: applications that once took six to eight months can, in some cases, be built in approximately two months.
That acceleration is changing the economics of software development. Rather than automatically buying another software-as-a-service product, Kent can increasingly assess whether an internal team can build a solution better suited to its requirements. Muku says such investments can pay back quickly.
The next frontier is intelligence across the value chain
Kent’s next challenge is to turn the growing volume of connected-product and operational data into actionable intelligence. The company is moving its analytics to a modern cloud data platform, with the goal of consolidating information and building a more capable data foundation.
As that foundation matures, Muku expects the company to build intelligence services on top of it. The potential applications include understanding customer usage, designing future products, moving towards usage-based servicing, and improving demand and inventory planning.
The opportunity extends beyond Kent’s own systems. The company already has cloud-based portals for suppliers and distributors, but gaining visibility deeper into the retail network remains difficult. Smaller partners use different business applications, so any data sharing has to work for them as well.
The goal is to build a clearer, potentially geospatial view of stock and business potential across distribution layers, helping Kent and its partners position inventory closer to demand, improve fill rates and reduce slow-moving stock. Achieving that requires not only technology but also a clear benefit for every partner who takes part.
This is where the distinction between digitisation and intelligence becomes critical: connecting systems is only the first step; making decisions across the network requires reliable data and cooperation among businesses.
AI needs guardrails as well as ambition
Muku sees customer support and outbound sales as promising areas for agentic AI, including lead qualification and assistance for sales and service technicians. But he is more cautious about deploying autonomous agents in finance or connecting them directly to systems that execute critical business transactions.
The distinction is one of risk and accountability. An agent that answers a customer query is not the same as one authorised to change a financial record or execute a payment. Access controls, authorisation, security and governance must evolve alongside the technology.
That caution informs Kent’s priorities for the next two to three years: a trusted, consolidated data platform; broader AI adoption; a secure software development lifecycle; and continued expansion of IoT across products, manufacturing and supply chains.
For Kent, the strategic prize is not AI for its own sake. It is a manufacturing business that can learn from products in the field, respond faster to customers, develop software more quickly, and coordinate a complex value chain with greater precision.
The purifier may remain the product customers see. Increasingly, however, the intelligence behind it could become what differentiates the business.