The industrial software landscape has been shifting rapidly for decades. Learning to use a tool was once a necessary first step; today, users simply ask for what they need. Yet despite this transformation, most industrial data remains untapped. Fragmented IT/OT environments and disconnected data silos remain the single biggest inhibitor of operational efficiency at scale. Tarun Singh, VP Sales & India Market Leader at AVEVA, is advocating a distinct strategy by embedding intelligence directly into existing workflows rather than adding disconnected layers of technology, thereby turning complex industrial data into trusted, actionable decisions.
Tarun was among the early adopters of big data technologies and later went on to spearhead 12 Integrated Command and Control Centres for smart cities, applying data intelligence at an urban scale. Tarun’s journey has been defined by bridging the gap between data and insight. As the recipient of the Global Partner Sales Leader of the Year 2025 award, he leads with the philosophy that true leadership is not about being the smartest person in the room, but about building the room where smart people do their best work.
From Writing Code to Architecting Urban Intelligence
The origins of Tarun Singh’s career lie in a simple but powerful pivot: moving from the technicality of writing code to the purpose of solving real-world customer problems.
- Career start: Tarun started as a software developer but felt a strong pull to move closer to the customer, a pivotal shift.
- Turning point (2011): At Johnson Controls, he realised customers faced deep challenges around energy management and sustainability, not just daily operations.
- The North Star: Massive industrial data was almost never used. He saw the need for actionable intelligence, and that gap became his north star.
Industrial intelligence applied at scale could transform operations from optimising energy and water to building sustainable infrastructure, addressing the world’s toughest challenges. Building on his foundation at Johnson Controls, Tarun Singh scaled this expertise toward city-wide digital transformation.
- At Schneider Electric and subsequently AVEVA, he moved from managing individual building systems to architecting the ‘Digital Backbone’ of entire urban ecosystems.
- As the sales leader for the Infrastructure and Smart City vertical, he spearheaded the deployment of 12 Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCC).
- By leveraging AVEVA Unified Operations Center (UOC) technology, he helped create a true ‘System of Systems’ allowing cities to respond instantly to stimulus from the ground.
- This marked a pivotal shift: moving from reactive maintenance to a proactive model where departments could coordinate and collaborate in real-time.
Tarun Singh’s journey is about using sophisticated software to drive operational resilience, improving citizen comfort and livability in the cities he served, a conviction shaped from Schneider Electric to AVEVA, where bridging industrial operations and digital innovation remains at his core.
Two Defining Moments That Shaped a Leadership Philosophy
“A leader’s real role is not to be the smartest person in the room, but to build the room where smart people do their best work.”
Tarun Singh
Tarun traces his leadership philosophy to two defining realisations. The first emerged during the early days of big data, when he witnessed firsthand the transformative potential of data intelligence for enterprises and economies.
As Tarun Singh progressed into leadership, he learned a critical lesson: you cannot achieve meaningful scale on your own. He once believed close control over every detail was the path to success, but discovered it is the biggest bottleneck to growth. True leadership means empowering your team and delegating with confidence because a trusted, ownership-driven team is virtually limitless.
Intelligence Embedded, Not Just Added
AVEVA takes a different path, enabling customers to turn complex industrial data into trusted decisions using advanced industrial AI with over 20 years of experience combining machine learning, pattern recognition, predictive analytics, generative AI, and LLMs through their Industrial AI Assistant. AVEVA is also investing in next-generation industrial and agentic AI through R&D to ensure innovation that is cutting-edge and production-ready.
Industrial AI is at AVEVA’s core, helping organisations unlock value, optimise performance, and make faster decisions. AVEVA differentiates by managing data across the asset lifecycle and embedding intelligence into existing workflows, not adding disconnected layers. The Industrial Intelligence Platform and CONNECT make AI scalable, accessible, and actionable with rapid time-to-value. Tarun emphasises that industrial intelligence brings trusted information with AI-enriched insights to drive collaboration and responsible use of resources.
In India, this translates into tangible outcomes. Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has achieved a 40% reduction in quality-related costs, while Pimpri-Chinchwad Smart City has reduced energy consumption by 15–20%. This proves that AVEVA’s frameworks are effective at scale across industrial and public infrastructure environments.
Three Shifts Reshaping Industrial Software
On the topic of emerging trends in industrial software, Tarun Singh points to three developments fundamentally reshaping how industries operate.
- Agentic AI is the top trend: users simply ask for what they need, lowering the expertise barrier. At AVEVA, AI assistants carry out requests, making advanced capabilities accessible to everyone, not just specialists.
- Digital twins are becoming living, intelligent systems, data-driven and fuelled by real-time AI. Converging IT, OT, and engineering data via CONNECT and NVIDIA, AVEVA creates dynamic replicas of industrial value chains to simulate gigawatt-scale AI factories with unmatched accuracy and scale.
- The third shift: point solutions to integrated platforms. Fragmented data blocks efficiency, so platforms must deliver insight, connect teams, and drive ROI, without rip-and-replace. The Databricks partnership combines AVEVA’s domain depth with Databricks’ AI to unify data and accelerate deployment.
- India’s Industry 4.0 market is growing at 24.5% CAGR to $28.5 billion by 2030. India is no longer just adopting industrial technology, but becoming an architect of it. AVEVA ensures Indian industries have the industrial intelligence platform to lead with confidence, speed, and sustainability.
Breaking Down Silos, Building Smart Cities
Data alone does not drive decisions; this is the truth Tarun Singh leans into when asked for a success story. With Nestlé, AVEVA proved the point. Rather than relying on lagging indicators from manual lab samples, the company deployed CONNECT and Advanced Analytics for real-time, AI-calculated setpoint recommendations. This achieved 10% less weight variation and up to 10% material savings, turning a production line into a smarter, leaner machine.
Shifting to city scale, GIFT City, India’s first operational greenfield smart city and a global financial services hub, tells the same story. AVEVA’s Unified Operations Centre connected utilities, infrastructure, and civic systems onto a single platform. This gave administrators real-time visibility and enabled faster, more informed decision-making. It also positioned GIFT City to compete with global financial hubs while exemplifying AVEVA’s role in enabling next-generation smart city ecosystems in India.
Together, these two examples reflect a consistent principle breaking down silos, connecting ecosystems, and turning data into decisions that create measurable impact, whether on a factory floor or across an entire city. That, in essence, is the AVEVA promise delivered.
The Scale of AVEVA’s Industrial Intelligence
Asked for AVEVA’s key statistics, Tarun says numbers tell a story that words cannot, reflecting the company’s scale and deep commitment to industrial transformation.
1. Global Scale at a Glance:
- EMPLOYEES & INFRASTRUCTURE: AVEVA employs more than 6,000 people across 10+ R&D Centres, 22+ Project Centres, and a partner network comprising over 4,300 system integrators, 120+ sales partners, and 250+ technology partners.
- INVESTMENT & INNOVATION: They reinvest 16% of their revenue back into R&D, and 85% of their projects include next-generation technology, reflecting a consistent, long-term commitment to innovation.
- CLIENT BASE & REACH: Over 90% of the world’s leading industrial enterprises rely on AVEVA, with solutions deployed across the world’s 10 largest shipyards, the top 25 pharma companies, and more than 16,000 manufacturing sites globally.
2. India’s Strategic Role – Not Just a Market, But a Pillar:
- R&D POWERHOUSE: Approximately 1,025 engineers are based in India, contributing to 43% of AVEVA’s global R&D capacity and feeding into more than 70% of AVEVA’s products.
- GLOBAL DELIVERY CENTRE: The Global Delivery Centre in India comprises 200+ experts and delivers 30% of AVEVA Global Services spanning Energy, Power, Chemicals, Infrastructure, Smart Cities, Consumer Goods, F&B, and Marine.
- THE BOTTOM LINE: Tarun Singh emphasises that India is not just a market for AVEVA; it is a strategic pillar of how they innovate, deliver, and grow as a global organisation.
Partnering to Scale: From NVIDIA to a Connected Maharashtra
Tarun Singh emphasises that partnerships are the cornerstone of AVEVA’s growth strategy, enabling value creation at scale by bringing together partners, technology providers, customers, and the wider ecosystem to scale responsible industrial AI adoption.
1. Global Collaboration: NVIDIA
- AVEVA’s collaboration with NVIDIA integrates AVEVA’s engineering and operations software into the NVIDIA Omniverse DSX Blueprint, advancing how industrial organisations approach AI-powered design and operations.
2. India Growth Strategy: Three Priorities
- Three priorities: Geographic expansion, relevance to industry demand, and customer impact partnerships enable all three.
- Focus areas: Manufacturing, energy, channel ecosystem, and government infrastructure priorities.
- Partner network: How AVEVA scales industrial intelligence across India.
3. The Connected Maharashtra Initiative: A Landmark Partnership
- MoU with Government of Maharashtra: The Connected Maharashtra initiative aims to position Maharashtra as India’s first fully integrated connected state.
- Goals: Enhance efficiency, reduce costs, increase revenue generation, and support sustainability goals while catalysing smart adoption across all critical infrastructure.
- Lighthouse Project Discovery Phase: At the core is a single, integrated platform that modernises water, energy, and infrastructure, enabling seamless data exchange across government and private sectors, with real-time analytics, predictive maintenance, and operational optimisation at scale.
4. Building on a Proven Foundation: Jal Jeevan Mission
- This builds on AVEVA’s history of unified data management for public infrastructure. Under the Jal Jeevan Mission, Maharashtra deployed the AVEVA PI System to unify data monitoring, ensuring safe drinking water and better scheme management for millions across the state.
Global Recognition, Decades of Proof
On awards, recognitions, and certifications that signal trust and impact, Tarun offers a dual answer: a personal achievement and AVEVA’s substantial, proven legacy.
1. Personal Recognition: Global Partner Sales Leader of the Year 2025
- Top Recognition: Tarun Singh’s most meaningful award is the Global Partner Sales Leader of the Year (2025).
- Why It Mattered: It was not purely about numbers. It reflected strategy execution and shaping the market landscape.
- What It Represented: Building and strengthening the partner ecosystem, making it easier for partners and customers to do business with AVEVA, and the broader organisational and market context they were driving.
2. AVEVA’s Industry Credibility: Trust Built Over Decades
- Beyond personal recognition, AVEVA’s credibility in the industry speaks for itself. They are trusted by over 90% of the world’s leading industrial enterprises to help them deliver life’s essentials from energy and food to medicines and infrastructure.
- AVEVA’s AI solutions have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, making AVEVA one of the first 50 companies globally to have their net-zero targets aligned with climate science requirements.
- With over 300 patents awarded to date and more than 20 years of industrial AI experience, AVEVA’s track record is built on decades of proven impact, not just promise.
Trust as a Foundation, Not an Add-On
Trust is foundational at AVEVA, underpinning how they build, deploy, and support customers providing best-of-breed, cybersecurity solutions for resiliency, business continuity, and sustainable growth. At the ecosystem level, trust means securely sharing data and insights across divides, and AVEVA’s open, agnostic platform breaks down silos while maintaining data integrity and security. AVEVA works hand-in-hand with partners to embed leading security and risk management principles, constantly monitoring to mitigate vulnerabilities and act on threats quickly.
AVEVA’s key capabilities include AI, digital twin, edge, cloud, MES, and HMI-SCADA. They embed AI across the software lifecycle with strong governance for secure, responsible, IP-safe use. Their conviction: powerful technology needs responsible stewardship. Their framework ensures accountability, fairness, and security with controls on data quality, model integrity, and human oversight so customers can confidently trust and act on outcomes.
AVEVA’s India Story Across Leading Publications
Tarun Singh notes that AVEVA’s Indian media presence tells a consistent story: deep commitment to India’s industrial growth, treating the country not just as a market but as a strategic hub for global innovation and delivery spanning R&D, partnerships, and on-ground impact.
Media Highlights:
- The Hindu covered AVEVA Day India 2025. Stakeholders from energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, and utilities explored how industrial AI and collaboration drive growth, capturing AVEVA’s conviction that industrial intelligence turns siloed data into insights to scale, compete globally, and operate sustainably.
- ET Energy World on AVEVA signed an MoU with HPCL Mittal Energy Limited (HMEL) at India Energy Week 2025. The AI-driven digitalisation partnership targets smart refining, energy efficiency, sustainability, and resource optimisation, exemplifying AVEVA’s role in India’s energy transition at an industrial scale.
- TechCircle highlighted AVEVA’s innovation roots in India: over 950 R&D personnel, representing 43% of the global development workforce, with plans to grow 5% annually. The focus is on industrial agentic AI, proving India is not just where AVEVA sells, but where AVEVA builds.
- Deccan Chronicle covered AVEVA’s new Customer Experience Centre in Hyderabad, one of only six globally, which lets customers see how AI and digital twins drive sustainability.
- Manufacturing Today India covered the “Connected Maharashtra” MoU (part of Vision 2030), where Industrial AI and unified digital platforms integrate water, energy, and infrastructure into one ecosystem for operational resilience and sustainable growth, positioning Maharashtra as a leader in large-scale digital transformation.
The Bigger Picture:
India’s $37-45 trillion 2047 vision puts total factor productivity at its centre because productive industries drive faster growth, and AVEVA helps organisations drive efficiency and productivity at scale. Media reflects this, but the opportunity is far larger than written.
Scale, Relevance, Impact: The Road Ahead for AVEVA
Asked about his top priorities for AVEVA over the next 2–3 years, Tarun Singh centres his answer on scale, relevance, and impact driven by geographic expansion, market alignment, and measurable outcomes for customers and the country.
1. Priority One: Scale through Geographic Expansion
- Government investment in infrastructure, utilities, and energy, combined with India’s ambition for a strong, self-reliant industrial economy, is creating significant opportunities for industrial software.
- AVEVA’s priority is to grow its footprint and industry engagement in line with demand, particularly across manufacturing, energy transition, and smart infrastructure.
2. Priority Two: Relevance
- India’s industrial landscape is evolving rapidly, and what the market demands today is different from even two or three years ago.
- Ensuring that AVEVA’s portfolio, go-to-market approach, and partner ecosystem remain tightly aligned with those demands is something Tarun Singh focuses on consistently.
- India’s 2047 vision puts total factor productivity at its core. Efficient industries drive faster growth, and that is exactly where AVEVA’s industrial intelligence platform delivers value.
3. Priority Three: Impact
- The third priority is impact: measurable outcomes for customers and for the country. That, ultimately, is what everything else must add up to.
4. Global Focus: Accelerating Industrial Intelligence
- Globally, AVEVA’s focus is on accelerating the adoption of industrial intelligence by integrating AI and digital twin capabilities to help customers move from point solutions to platforms.
- Organisations making this shift are seeing stronger, more sustainable growth. That is the transformation AVEVA is helping customers navigate, and it remains at the core of their global strategy.
To new industry leaders and entrepreneurs starting your journey in industrial software or digital transformation,
Let me offer you two lessons from nearly two decades of experience.
First: before you build scale, build depth. The temptation is to jump onto the latest technology and immediately start building. But that is not where you should begin. What is far more important is understanding your customer’s environment, their industry, and their value chain. Whether it is oil and gas, power and utilities, energy transition, or building a digital twin, each requires a certain level of domain depth. Without that foundation, there is simply no way to scale.
Second: you cannot scale alone. Early in my career, I believed maintaining close control over every detail was the path to success. I was wrong. That instinct is the biggest bottleneck to growth.
True leadership means empowering your team, delegating with confidence, and building people who take genuine ownership. That is what creates lasting impact.
Build depth. Then build scale. And never try to go it alone.
Tarun Singh
VP Sales & India Market Leader, AVEVA
Key Takeaways:
- Before you build scale, build depth. Without domain understanding, there is no foundation for growth.
- The gap between data and insight is where the real transformation begins.
- Maintaining close control over every detail is the biggest bottleneck to growth.
- Empower your team and delegate with genuine confidence.
- Perfection can be delayed, but progress cannot. Small, consistent actions compound into lasting impact.
