KONE Elevator India, a leading elevator and escalator manufacturer and a wholly owned subsidiary of Finland-based KONE Corporation, has entered into a new phase of its strategy: ‘Sustainable success with customers’. Urbanization, sustainability and technology are three megatrends which continue to be key drivers in the development of the vertical transportation industry. KONE with its people flow expertise, has been co-creating innovative products and solutions with its customers and partners to recreate safer user journeys and healthy spaces in buildings. As a result, KONE India launched the first digitally connected elevators – KONE DX Class Elevators, as well as iREFRESH – the five natural elements design theme in its ‘i’ series replenished with 35 innovative aesthetic designs.
KONE has also launched AI-based KONE 24/7 Connected Services which connects the elevators to their cloud-based service and uses analytics to detect potential problems before they cause disruption. Due to the pandemic there is also a sharp increase in demand from the customers for 24/7 Connected Services in their existing or new elevators that they are purchasing as customers want minimum interruption. Meanwhile, there are signs of the Real Estate industry after the second wave of pandemic showing good signs of recovery as all real estate players are back in business trying to complete their projects on time or announcing new and exciting launches.
As the real estate markets revive, there is huge spike in commodity prices globally and in India. In fact, since January 2020, steel (HR/CR) and copper has already seen 70% increase. Therefore, the cost of the apartments is increasing, and the customers are also keen to buy apartments now, because this cost might continue to escalate.
According to Amit Gossain Managing Director, KONE Elevator India, “There is a clear surge in demand for our products especially the excitement around the new products; the KONE DX Class Elevators, the iREFRESH as well as 24/7 Connected Services especially because customers have become even more particular about products that offer futuristic designs particularly in safety and quality that cause minimum disruption.”
He further adds, “Due to a big impact of commodity price increase, we have also taken action to increase our price in the market to some extent which is already expected by our customers, as they know that their costs have gone up too, and thus, understand our rationale. They are also aware that our services in safety and quality of products, installation and services are absolutely world class ensuring that our customers are successful and true to our motto; for us to succeed our customers must succeed.”
KONE during sales, installation and services strictly follows all the safety protocols including safety masks, sanitizers and social distancing, which has become a norm and we see clearly the whole real estate industry is very carefully doing the same.