In metals, every second counts — AI helps us win those seconds

The global metals market is growing at a healthy 4% per year, propelled by increasing infrastructure, electronics, and clean-energy demand, and is forecast to grow from USD 4.23 trillion today to an estimated USD 4.97 trillion by 2029.

On the other hand, there is an erosion of base-metal inventories, with London Metal Exchange zinc deliveries at the lowest level in two years, and aluminum supplies declining to levels not seen since prior to 2022. In a high-stakes environment like this, being first (and fast) in procurement is not just an advantage; it is a requirement. 

That is why Enlight Metals Pvt Ltd. has launched a “digital colleague”—a conversational AI that can process inbound inquiries through WhatsApp, the website, and phone instantaneously, while maintaining both trading standards and specifications.

The AI can field inquiries, qualify leads, capture specifications, originate quotations, and even more 24×7 because any and all transactions are not just weekdays, they are 24×7 transactions which means their customer-facing staff can support and ensure the very best value in procurement and sourcing.

According to Director Dhananjay Goel, in addition to drives over 60% better response times, Enlight’s AI smartly empowers procurement teams to focus on higher value activities, like negotiation, making trust, and making strategic decisions, but it also keeps the human check that business-to-business trust and relationships in trade has and needs. 

Enlight's capitalization on the importance of trust in business demonstrates how digital innovation can infuse energy into a legacy industry like metal aggregation. Enlight’s digital colleague shows how Industry 5.0 can bring together machine execution and human validation to position itself and their businesses ahead in a time and age where accuracy, transparency and time can make or break a deal!

Enlight recently announced the integration of conversational AI for metal procurement. What was the core problem you were trying to solve, and how does AI fit into that journey?

In the metals business, every second matters. The first company to respond with a clear, competitive offer usually wins the order. Before AI, we were losing valuable hour’s sometimes even days just capturing basic information from incoming inquiries, verifying specifications, and following up for missing details. This not only slowed our response time but also created unnecessary strain on our teams.

We realised that if we could automate the initial layers of interaction without compromising the personal rapport we have with clients, we could change the game. Conversational AI became that solution. It integrates seamlessly with multiple touchpoints whether an inquiry comes via WhatsApp, through our website, or over the phone. The AI captures the requirement instantly, asks the right follow-up questions if something is missing, and ensures only qualified, complete leads reach our sales team.

The biggest win is consistency and speed. We now have what I call a “24×7 digital colleague” who never gets tired, never forgets, and never misses a lead allowing our people to focus on value-driven work rather than administrative loops.

Industry 5.0 is all about human–machine collaboration. How is your AI solution designed to work with your procurement teams or customers—not just replace them?

Our philosophy is clear AI is here to amplify human capability, not replace it. In our setup, the AI acts as a co-pilot. It handles the repetitive, mechanical tasks: recording precise specifications, matching them to our supplier database, drafting initial quotations, and flagging potential best-fit vendors.

This frees up our sales and procurement teams to focus on what humans do best building trust, negotiating terms, understanding nuanced client needs, and making judgment calls that go beyond data points. Every quote, every price commitment, and every delivery promise still has a human sign-off.

This balance ensures two things speed, because AI does the heavy lifting instantly; and credibility, because final decisions always have a human stamp. It’s a partnership where technology drives efficiency and humans preserve the trust factor.

Enlight Metals is not a tech or IT company in the traditional sense. What motivated your team to adopt AI-first thinking in a domain like industrial metal aggregation?

Industrial metal aggregation is a space that hasn’t seen much digital disruption. For decades, it has been built around phone calls, handwritten notes, manual ledgers, and a lot of physical follow-ups. That works in a localised setting—but if you want to operate at PAN-India scale with dozens of product categories and hundreds of suppliers, the old methods hit a wall quickly.

We took an honest look at our growth ambitions and realised that the traditional approach wouldn’t take us where we wanted to go. AI-first thinking was not about chasing the latest tech trend it was about building the foundation for a future-ready metals supply chain.

By adopting AI, we could shorten decision cycles, remove inefficiencies, and help our teams focus on high-value problem-solving instead of administrative tasks. In many ways, we are setting a precedent for how an old-world industry like ours can reinvent itself and compete on a modern playing field.

Can you walk us through a typical AI-powered interaction for example, how a customer or partner might use the conversational interface to place or manage orders?

Picture this: A customer sends us a message on WhatsApp saying they need 100 tonnes of HR coils of a particular thickness and grade. In the past, this would trigger a chain of back-and-forth calls or emails first to confirm dimensions, then to check stock availability, then to source supplier quotes often taking two to three days.

Now, the AI kicks in immediately. It understands the requirement, prompts the customer for any missing details, and routes the complete request to our sales team within minutes. Once the sales team approves, the AI’s procurement module scans our supplier database, identifies the best matches, prepares a draft quotation, and sends it for human verification.

Within a few hours sometimes even the same morning the customer has a verified quote in their inbox or WhatsApp. Throughout the process, both our internal team and the customer have complete visibility on the status. It’s speed and transparency rolled into one.

What kind of impact have you observed so far in terms of efficiency, response time, human workload, or client satisfaction? Are there any measurable outcomes?

The results have been very encouraging. Our average response time to qualified inquiries has dropped by more than 60%, which is a significant competitive advantage in metals trading. Lead-to-quote cycles that previously took two or three days now often finish in less than 24 hours.

From a workload perspective, our sales and procurement teams have seen over a one-third reduction in repetitive administrative work. This means they can handle more opportunities without burning out—effectively increasing our sales capacity without adding headcount.

On the client side, faster and more accurate quotes naturally lead to higher conversion rates. Customers feel they are dealing with a company that respects their time and operates with precision, which strengthens long-term relationships.

How have your internal teams responded to this shift? Did it require reskilling or a change in workflows to integrate AI into day-to-day operations?

Any change in workflow requires some adaptation, and AI was no different. We restructured certain processes so that AI outputs became the starting point for human work rather than the other way around. This meant conducting short, focused training sessions to help teams interpret and act on AI-generated insights effectively.

The adoption curve was surprisingly short because the benefits were visible from day one. People saw how much time they were saving, how many fewer follow-ups they had to chase, and how much more headspace they had for strategic discussions. Instead of fear or resistance, there was genuine excitement.

Trust and transparency are key in B2B supply chains. How do you ensure that AI-driven interactions maintain the same level of reliability and relationship-building as human-led ones?

In our business, trust is as valuable as the metal we trade. That’s why we’ve built strict guardrails into our AI systems. No quote generated by AI is ever sent to a client without human review and approval.

We also maintain complete audit trails every interaction, every data point, every quote is logged and accessible to both internal teams and, where relevant, customers and suppliers. This shared visibility removes ambiguity and builds confidence.

The AI might be invisible to the customer, but the speed and accuracy they experience are backed by our commitment to accountability at every stage.

What’s next for Enlight Metals in its Industry 5.0 journey? Do you see AI playing a larger role in pricing intelligence, logistics, or even sustainability tracking?

The journey is just beginning. We are actively working on AI-driven pricing intelligence that can respond to market shifts in real time, enabling us to adjust offers within hours instead of days.

On the logistics side, we’re developing AI-enabled tracking that will give customers a live view of their shipments down to estimated arrival times and route progress. For sustainability, we’re exploring tools that can measure and report the carbon footprint per order, helping both us and our clients meet evolving environmental compliance norms.

Our vision is an end-to-end intelligent supply chain where every stage, from inquiry to delivery, is transparent, efficient, and environmentally conscious.

For other traditional industries considering AI, what advice would you give on starting small, getting buy-in, and focusing on use cases that genuinely deliver value?

My advice is to forget the hype and focus on the pain point. Don’t start with “We want AI” start with “We need to solve this specific problem.” In our case, it was wasted hours on unqualified inquiries.

Pick one problem that has a direct impact on customer satisfaction or your bottom line. Solve it well, show quick results, and make sure your team sees those wins firsthand. Keep human oversight in the loop to build trust and confidence in the system. Once you’ve proven the value, scaling AI to other areas becomes a natural next step.

Lastly, do you see Enlight Metals emerging as a digital leader within the industrial supply chain ecosystem—and how are you preparing for that leadership role?

Yes, and we are building toward it very deliberately. We’ve moved from being a company that uses digital tools to one that thinks digitally. Our operations are becoming data-first, workflows are being redesigned for automation, and our people are being trained to work seamlessly with advanced tools.

We’re not simply transferring old processes into a digital format we’re reimagining them entirely for speed, scalability, and sustainability. In the next decade, digital-first operations will be the baseline in our industry. We intend to be remembered as the company that proved metals could be traded faster, more transparently, and more responsibly at a national scale.