Vikas Lifecare has announced that its subsidiary Genesis Gas Solutions has formed a joint venture with Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) to establish India's first Integrated Smart Meter Manufacturing Plant at a cost of Rs 1100 million.

According to the agreement, IGL and Genesis will establish India's first Integrated State-of-the-Art Smart Meter Manufacturing Plant to produce Diaphragm Gas Meters with IoT technologies such as LoRa, LoRaWAN, Bluetooth, NFC, NB-IoT, and so on.

According to an exchange filing, these metres will provide solutions to manage consumers' energy demand and metering with utmost accuracy and in real time.

The proposed joint venture will also develop necessary software, interface with in-built smart analytics, dashboards, and predictive maintenance protocols, systems that are quickly becoming a requirement for efficiently running any gas distribution business.

Notably, offshore suppliers currently dominate the Gas Metering Solutions market. According to Vikas Group Chairman Vikas Garg, the joint venture will be a game changer and will revolutionise Smart Metering technology in India, as well as a step forward towards AtmaNirbahar Bharat.

"The joint venture between IGL and Genesis has been announced is being announced following the spirit of government's Make in India - Make for World initiative, shall be instrumental in paradigm shift in favour of domestic players," he said.

According to Pawan Kumar, director (commercial), IGL, the company is taking a significant step towards diversification into allied manufacturing business in line with the company's mission and vision for green, clean, and sustainable growth.

"This JV will aid in import substitution and provide impetus to the Amrit Kaal (Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav) initiative," he said.

The Smart Meter Manufacturing Plant will initially have a capacity of 1 million metres per year and is expected to be operational by April 2024.