- Ranked as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies by Forbes for the 6th consecutive year
- Pioneers in Machine Room less Elevators – Celebrating 20 years of KONE MonoSpace®
- KONE UltraRope™ - Steel Rope replaced with Carbon Fiber Rope enabling Elevator ride to double up to 1 km
- Technology cooperation with IBM to provide cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) Technologies & Services to drive Innovation in Smart Buildings
India 20 October 2016: KONE, a global leader in the Elevator and Escalator Industry, has been ranked as one of the world's most innovative companies by business magazine Forbes. It is the sixth year running that KONE has made it to the world's most innovative companies list, inside the top 100. This year, KONE ranked 56th making it the 8th most innovative company in Europe. KONE is also the only elevator and escalator company featured on the list.
“Innovation has been at the core of KONE's business. We are proud to have been recognized for our innovation by Forbes.” said Amit Gossain, Managing Director, KONE India. “At KONE we have mapped our innovation focus areas by carefully understanding universal needs for sustainable and smart urban development in order to come a step closer to our customer!”
KONE is celebrating MonoSpace’s (Machine room less elevator) 20th anniversary this year to mark its contribution to the Industry and its role in influencing the culture of innovation at KONE. In 1995, KONE installed the first machine-room-less KONE MonoSpace® elevators featuring new revolutionary gearless hoisting technology. While the KONE EcoDisc® drastically reduced energy consumption and provided gearless ride comfort for residential buildings, its installation methods took safety to a new level.
KONE UltraRope™ is a completely new hoisting technology that eliminates the disadvantages of conventional steel rope by using carbon fibre and opens up a world of possibilities in high-rise building design - an important consideration as urbanization brings increasing numbers of people to cities. Nearly 600 buildings of 200 meters or more are currently under construction or planned to be built over the next few years, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Additionally, there are some 3,000 buildings in the world that could benefit from modernization with KONE UltraRope™.
With real-time insight about the operation of its equipment, KONE’s plans to drive further innovation and develop new solutions and services to improve the flow of people in some of the world’s busiest cities and buildings. Using IBM’s open standards-based Watson IoT Cloud platform, KONE plans to allow a vast developer ecosystem via Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) to build new applications to make a smoother, safer and more personalized people flow experience for building users. KONE is embedding intelligence across its operations and driving a wave of innovation in smarter buildings.
As we understand the demands and the changing trends of urbanization, we believe that we have a great potential to add value to our customers and society at large. It would in turn make contribution to rising living standards, in the most sustainable ways.
About KONE
At KONE, our mission is to improve the flow of urban life. As a global leader in the elevator and escalator industry, KONE provides elevators, escalators and automatic building doors, as well as solutions for maintenance and modernization to add value to buildings throughout their life cycle. Through more effective People Flow®, we make people's journeys safe, convenient and reliable, in taller, smarter buildings. In 2015, KONE had annual net sales of EUR 8.6 billion, and at the end of the year close to 50,000 employees. KONE class B shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd. in Finland.
www.kone.com
About KONE in India
KONE’s presence in India dates back to 1984 and today it is the leading elevator company in India. Based in Chennai, KONE India serves customers all over the country through its 40+ branches and provides sustainable People Flow™ solutions for India’s rapidly growing cities. It employs about 4100 + people in the country.
KONE’s production unit in Chennai produces elevators for the Indian market as well as for Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The production unit also manufactures components for modernization projects in other Asian-Pacific markets such as Australia, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. Chennai also has a training centre where KONE’s installation engineers and field mechanics are trained to meet KONE India’s strong reputation for high quality and uncompromised safety, as well as the expectations of Indian customers, when installing and maintaining elevators and escalators. KONE’s global technology and engineering centre is a testing and research hub, which supports the latest technology and development of future KONE solutions.
KONE contributes to sustainable urban development with eco-efficient solutions that offer energy savings in buildings and deliver the best user experience. KONE is a pioneer in developing Eco-efficient solutions. KONE along with the KCF (KONE Centennial Foundation) supports the social development of a local community in Chennai in collaboration with Rotary Club of Madras.