Industrial innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum – and I’ve seen this first hand.
Tuomo Hoysniemi, President – Division Drive Products at ABB
I’ve spent a good part of my career working in China and across Asia, and one thing has always been clear to me: the best results happen when people come together, share knowledge, and move fast. That’s exactly what I saw recently at our channel partner meetings in Guangdong, China and Dehradun, India – and it was really energizing.
More than 80 partners joined us at each event to listen, reflect, challenge and plan together. In China, the focus was on the growth, innovations and opportunities in the machinery OEM segment. In India, we talked about what the next big phase of growth looks like – winning together faster. And across both markets, the message was the same: strong partnerships are the real driving force behind delivering impact at scale.
Local expertise, global strength
At ABB, we have 110,000 people operating across all the continents. We are truly a global business. But what I always say is: being global only works if you are deeply and truly local.
Our channel partners are exactly that. They play a key role in how we serve customers, how we innovate, and how we grow. They understand the customer’s world and its specific challenges, expectations, and needs. The great thing is that when you combine ABB’s global engineering capabilities with this deep local expertise, customers get the best of both worlds. No single organization can meet every customer’s needs as quickly and deeply as a strong partner network together with ABB.
Confidence through collaboration in China
In Guangdong, our partners shared examples of where our technology and their ingenuity came together to deliver real impact. What I loved about these conversations is that they moved well beyond individual products. We were talking about how we stay relevant together in a market that is moving rapidly and bringing expertise close to the customer
Partners spoke about how working with ABB gives them confidence to grow: clearer business direction, stronger local product development, better sales execution. This kind of confidence is not built overnight. It’s built hand-to-hand, through consistent collaboration and seeing real progress year on year.
Scaling together in India’s fast-moving market
In Dehradun, I saw that same spirit of shared purpose. Our teams and partners were aligned in direction, realistic about the challenges ahead, and motivated to move forward together with a more solution-driven mindset. And when I say move forward – I mean move fast. Speed to value is really the core of what we do together. There was also discussion about the growing importance of delivering more integrated solutions that simplify customer applications across industries.
One great example of this is our collaboration with Sieger, an Indian automation provider integrating ABB drives into textile handling and material transportation solutions. The result is more precise control, improved productivity, and greater energy efficiency across complex, multi-stage industrial processes. And the payback on that kind of investment is typically very fast – 2 to 3 years – which makes it a compelling case for customers.
Shaping the future through partnership
Looking ahead, I am genuinely excited about what’s possible. The landscape of industrial technology is evolving rapidly. The need for greater efficiency, reliability, and resilience is only growing. Electrification and automation – through drives, motors, and PLCs – are right at the heart of this transformation.
We will keep investing in local R&D and production, strengthening support capabilities, and building new facilities that make ABB even more accessible for our partners and customers as we have just done in Nanjing.
But the real fuel for this growth is long-term partnership. When we work hand-to-hand with our channel partners, when we understand each other’s strengths, moving at fast pace, and staying close to the customer – that’s when the great things happen. And I look forward to moving even faster together.