Microsoft is partnering India’s Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) to accelerate the firm’s digital transformation and shape the future of innovation in the oil and gas industry. The companies have agreed on a seven year partnership to implement the digitial which will include the creation of IoT enabled supply chains and the monitoring of millions of sensors across 19,000+ fuel stations.

The collaboration between the two companies seeks to unlock opportunities that Microsoft’s cloud can provide to address challenges in the oil and gas sector, enabling BPCL to accelerate the modernisation of its tech architecture.

Through a seven-year collaboration, Microsoft will provide infrastructure as a service (IAAS), platform as a service (PAAS), network and security services on the cloud, including Azure native services on Azure Datafactory, API, IOT and analytics. Microsoft’s secure cloud platform with data privacy at the centre will fuel BPCL’s cloud transformation, providing the intelligence to transform operations, build smarter supply chains and increase customer engagement.

Both companies have also been working closely to provide a secure collaboration experience for BPCL’s employee ecosystem across the country, with Microsoft Teams and workplace productivity suite.

Microsoft will help BPCL create a digital customer experience for BPCL customers through UFill – a fuelling solution powered by Microsoft Azure. With UFill, customers do not need to check at zero or final reading and other offline manual interventions.

Microsoft is also helping BPCL digitally transform its backend operations, enabling IoT powered supply chains with Microsoft Azure. BPCL’s Digital Nerve Centre, IRIS, will remotely monitor thousands of sensors, integrating across 19,000+ fuel stations, retail terminals, bottling plants, consumer pumps, RDI (Railway Diesel Installations) and VTS (Vehicle Tracking System) systems, to ensure BPCL’s entire supply chain is tamper proof and delivers 100% percent quality.

BPCL is also building a conversational AI platform, utilising Azure. A chat bot, Urja, will provide access to anytime, anywhere customer support across platforms customer support across platforms anytime, anywhere. Urja can be accessed by customers on platforms of their choice, including WhatsApp and Facebook, providing the flexibility and convenience of access at a click.

Rahul Tandon, Chief General Manager (Project Anubhav), BPCL said, “Microsoft has been one of the undisputed global leaders in technology for decades altogether and BPCL is proud of taking this partnership forward now in the cloud domain. Through our cloud based digital transformation project, we are focused to build innovative and customer friendly solutions which are increasingly interconnected, smart, always available and provide a single window of BPCL services to customers seamlessly. We look forward to unlocking value for the organisation by availing world class scalable infrastructure, crashing our time to market and reimagining the way our customers interact with BPCL.”

Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, “BPCL is one of the most respected public sector companies in the country and we are honoured to work together to define the next frontiers of data driven innovation and customer engagement in the oil and gas industry. Bringing together BPCL’s operational expertise with Microsoft’s cloud and AI capabilities, our partnership will help fortify BPCL’s business operations with trust and security at the core.”