Industry 4.0 Built Visibility. Industry 5.0 Must Automate Decisions, Says GeekyAnts CEO at ET Now Business Conclave 2026

GeekyAnts CEO Kumar Pratik says India’s next manufacturing leap depends on AI-led decision-making, at a panel on “Future-Ready Manufacturing - Scaling the Global Factory Floor”

India’s manufacturing sector is moving into a more demanding phase, where automation alone is no longer the differentiator. Speaking at the ET Now.in Business Conclave & Awards 2026 – Gujarat Edition, GeekyAnts Founder and CEO Kumar Pratik said Industry 4.0 helped factories build visibility through connected systems, sensor data, and predictive dashboards, but the next leap will depend on how quickly that intelligence can drive decisions in real time.

That shift, Kumar Pratik suggested, is what defines the move toward Industry 5.0. For manufacturers under pressure to improve uptime, productivity, and sustainability at the same time, AI’s real value lies not just in generating real-time insights, but in helping reduce decision delays that still sit within operational and leadership silos. In that sense, the conversation around manufacturing transformation is becoming less about data visibility and more about intelligent action.

Pratik also tied that change to India’s wider industrial ambitions, saying that GPUs and semiconductor chips hold a powerful leverage, and India will need stronger capabilities in automated manufacturing if it wants to shape the future of global industrial growth.

What This Means for Indian Manufacturers

For Indian manufacturers the problem is not data but speed: turning insights into action. Gartner reports point the finger towards siloed information as a major barrier to better real-time decisions, and a recent World Economic Forum survey found that while 60% of manufacturers adopt AI for operations, fewer than 20% say it has driven measurable topline growth.

Globally, manufacturers are moving to smarter, scalable and holistically connected systems, where planning, quality and maintenance act in concert rather than in isolation. To drive AI-driven industrial transformation, the real competitive advantage does not come from adopting AI as a standalone tool but from using it strategically to reshape how decisions get made across the business. For India, closing the gap between visibility and action and building a scalable tech stack will determine the next chapter of industrial growth.