India, Oct. 15 -- Nobody on a factory floor wakes up wanting AI, Internet of Things (IoT) systems or a smarter dashboard. Their job is simply to keep machines running, production moving, and compliance headaches at bay. For factories, this also means keeping track of groundwater extraction, air quality and other metrics, which regulators now expect enterprises to monitor and report.

For decades, this grunt work rested on manual readings. A flow meter installed on a borewell would tell a factory how much water was being pumped out. Someone would note the reading, compile it and submit it to the relevant authority. The system worked, but it was slow, fragmented and vulnerable to inaccurate reporting.

Now, as regulatory expectations shift ...