The digital transformation has already entered its fine tuning phase. The penetration of automation into the nuances of the engineering industry is well on the go – in pursuit of sustainability, smart manufacturing, and driving down costs. Let’s take the case of the Energy industry. Operating amidst acutely challenging environments, the Oil & Gas and Green Energy companies are in constant look out for developing products & providing services / solutions at the lowest of costs, spanning their multi-fold product lines. The need of the hour is disruptive technology solutions that can take the outcomes to the level-next by recognizing the onsite, ground-level engineering challenges, helping in decision, making and optimizing tools. This is precisely where Exo-Field Engineering Solutions pitches in. A Mumbai-based, techpowered niche Engineering Solutions company, Exo-Field combines its deep, core physics and multi arena engineering know-how with key expertise in software development, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and data analytics to provide game changing, patented technology solutions in the engineering arena.

Exo-Field’s expertise and experience stem from its founder/co-founder duo – Tushar Chowhan (Managing Director) and H. L. Chowhan (Senior Director), who boast a cumulative engineering experience of more than half a century. Tushar’s professional experience spans across close to three decades and several significant milestones like setting up, building & leading one of the most advanced & top-notch engineering/R&D centers & manufacturing function for a global multinational in India, and growing it to a 300 people multi-branch center. This combines with H. L. Chowhan’s extensive experience in the power generation sector. He is also designated with the credit of setting-up the first combine cycle power plant in the country. We engages in an exclusive chat with Tushar, wherein he shares the way Exo-Field is hosting a paradigm shift in the engineering industry with disruptive innovations & solutions.

Digital transformation has put data at the center of everything. Businesses are awash with data. They struggle to identify the dos and don'ts and what is of paramount importance. In this data intensive business world, how is Exo-Field Engineering Solutions positioned to assist businesses in getting the best out of their data?
We are a core engineering and software company, working to invent & build the next generation, game changing engineering products and technologies for an elevated tomorrow. We are working in areas challenged with complex engineering problems, while also focusing on harnessing both conventional and renewable energy. Our core expertise lies in combining our physics and multi branch engineering-based expertise with artificial intelligence-based, edge and cloud hosted data analytics systems to help solve the toughest of engineering challenges prevailing today.

In those lines, we have developed an engineering and data analytics product(s) that includes an application for extending the current realm of deep-down-the-earth drilling. It will enable the future to harness the unlimited down-the-earth heat energy – a green, sustained & continues energy source for tomorrow in comparison with the

current paradigm shift towards solar and wind energy that are battery storage driven and do not work all the time.

In the data analytics space, we specialize in extending engineering data analytics with disruptive technologies, including computer/ machine vision, machine learning, physics & engineering based data analytics, cloud, and IoT.

What is the level of expertise and experience that we are talking about? Also, tell us about the segments that Exo-Field caters to.
Our team is a combination of engineers with excellent experience from multiple engineering streams, including, but not limited to, software development, data analytics, and artificial intelligence & machine learning.

Exo-Field is currently operating in two major areas – innovative and high-tech engineering product building and providing core engineering out-sourcing services. We are providing services to multiple organizations across the globe – helping to design and develop data analytics technology that helps in improving global oil & gas production for upstream wells. The most recent one is an optimization software deployed across hundreds of Oil & Gas wells in the Middle East. Our solutions cater to shale and unconventional Oil as well. Alongside, we also cater solutions for Mechanical design of Oil & Gas equipment, and the development of refined software for Civil, Pipeline, and other engineering domains.

Exo-Field is a strong advocator and proponent of retrieving the unlimited and clean, deep down-the-earth heat energy. To retrieve that clean heat energy, you have to drill deep down the earth in a magnitude of five-to-ten kilometers. This requires highly complex drilling tools, systems, and an intensive data-based solution. And that’s where we specialize in. We have made several fundamental inventions and developed a key product(s) on this front.

One of the fundamental problems facing manufacturers & drilling operators is the need for accessing and assessing the health and state of the drilling tool midway during a remote drilling session. The drilling location could even be in the middle of a deep-sea. We have partnered with a leading American company, to use our patented product framework to develop an artificial intelligence-vision & physics based data analytics system. It operates via a robotic arm, and with a smart phone, we can automatically deep scan and analyze the PDC Drill Bit on the field with respect to health and faults as well as computing its vital engineering parameters. Coupled with cutting-edge predictive and prescriptive analytics and cloud technology, we can generate a detailed engineering analysis report of the tool & the drilling system with respect to its current and future drilling capability. The actionable data generated helps the drilling operator on the field to make key decisions, optimize the tool, and improve the overall outcome.



Additionally, the data driven software can visualize and analyze the tool to identify susceptible areas in it and automatically recommend design changes and send the health & analysis report to the manufacturer over the cloud. This is a key ability that the industry lacked in the past to constantly improve the tool. Our data analytics product is currently undergoing beta trials and getting ready to be deployed on the field to host a fundamental change in the industry.

Tell us about the future roadmap of the company.
Our key objective, mission, and vision remain on inventing and building the next generation technology for our country and the world. Another exciting product in our pipeline is a terrain surface flow scan system that can scan and analyze a surface geo-terrain for surface water flow. The road pothole prediction is a predominant application. The available applications presently can only detect and diagnose the occurrence of existing potholes on the road. Our system, coupled with physics-based data analytics can also predict where the potholes are most likely to form and provide guidance in the way road should be constructed in the first place. This will transform the way road infrastructure development happens in our country.

As a long term objective, we are also working on an alternate physics based system to develop a ‘Self-propelled, remotely guided, ground penetrating, and traversing down the earth-rover’’. It is aimed at multiple applications, including for Space Sciences, wherein we are working on building a rover that can explore below the surface of a planet (Mars/Europa and others). It is also projected towards game changing defense application(s).

For us at Exo-Field, the driving force is our capability to utilize our deep science-based expertise with the next generation technology to make key inventions and products that serve our nation and the world.