Kone India’s plan to double its connected elevator portfolio in India within a year points to a larger shift in how high-rise buildings manage one of their most essential—and often least visible—systems. The company says its connected lifts can be monitored remotely, allowing engineers to identify faults before breakdowns and, in some cases, help release passengers trapped inside elevator cars.
The initiative is not simply a technology upgrade. It reflects the operational pressures placed on elevators in Indian buildings, where the intensity of use, combined with heat, humidity and dust, can accelerate wear. As cities add apartments, hospitals, hotels and commercial buildings, the reliability of vertical transport becomes increasingly tied to the everyday functioning of the built environment.
At present, around 30% of Kone’s elevators in India—approximately 50,000 lifts—are connected and can be controlled remotely, according to the company. Kone global president and CEO Philippe Delorme told The Times of India that the company intends to double this number within a year. The company is also working on replacing elevators that are between 30 and 40 years old.
The stated objective is to reduce downtime caused by technical faults and improve the response when passengers are trapped. Connected-lift technology allows engineers to examine operating data and use artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict failures before they occur, the company said. The system can also support remote intervention when a lift becomes immobilised.
That capability matters because an elevator failure is not merely a maintenance inconvenience. In a hospital, a lift may be part of the movement of patients, staff and equipment between floors. In a hotel or residential building, it may determine whether elderly people, people with disabilities, service workers and families can move through the premises. A prolonged outage can therefore affect the functioning of a building even when the rest of its infrastructure is operating normally.
Delorme said an automatic rescue device installed in elevators is designed to move a lift to the next level and open its doors when passengers are trapped. However, he added that battery problems or mechanical faults can prevent that system from working. In such situations, Kone says its connected technology can allow the lift to be controlled remotely so that passengers can exit.
The distinction between automatic rescue and remote intervention is important. Automatic systems are designed to respond to a defined emergency condition, while connected monitoring provides an additional layer of information and control. The company’s account suggests that the value of the system lies not only in responding after a failure but also in identifying abnormal performance before it becomes a breakdown.
Kone cited results from two Kolkata facilities to illustrate this point. At a boutique hotel, the company said 80% of issues were resolved after connected technology was introduced. At a hospital, it reported a resolution rate of 98%. The source material does not specify the period covered by these figures, the number of incidents recorded or how the rates were calculated. They should therefore be read as company-reported operational outcomes rather than as an independent industry benchmark.
Even with that limitation, the examples show where connected maintenance is intended to have the greatest effect: buildings where lift availability is closely linked to service continuity. A hotel may face operational disruption when rooms or common areas become difficult to access, while a hospital has more serious logistical constraints when vertical movement is interrupted. In both cases, faster diagnosis can reduce the time between a fault being detected and a technician responding.
The underlying challenge is the age and usage profile of India’s lift stock. Delorme said lifts in India experience usage intensity five times higher than those in the United States or Europe. As an example, he compared more than five lakh starts a year for a lift in India with one lakh starts in Europe. He also said heat, humidity and dust place additional stress on equipment.
These figures frame elevator maintenance as a question of operating conditions rather than simply equipment age. A lift that serves a busy residential tower, hospital or commercial property may accumulate far more operating cycles than a comparable lift in another market. Environmental exposure can add to that burden. The result is a maintenance problem that may not be visible to occupants until a fault causes an outage or a safety incident.
This is why Kone’s plan combines connected monitoring with modernisation. The company is not presenting digital connectivity as a substitute for replacing older equipment. Instead, its stated approach involves connecting more lifts while also encouraging customers to replace systems that have been in service for three or four decades. The two strategies address different weaknesses: data and remote control can improve oversight of operating equipment, while modernisation can address the limitations of ageing components.
The institutional responsibility, however, does not rest with the elevator manufacturer alone. Building owners and facility managers determine whether maintenance is carried out, whether older lifts are modernised and whether safety systems remain functional. The company’s comments are directed at customers because the decision to replace or upgrade a lift is ultimately part of building asset management. For residents and users, the quality of that management is experienced as reliability, waiting time and safety.
Connected systems also change the maintenance relationship between a building and its service provider. Traditional maintenance is often associated with scheduled inspections or a response after a complaint. Predictive systems create the possibility of acting on performance data before occupants notice a failure. That requires the data to be monitored, interpreted and linked to a capable field response. Connectivity alone cannot repair a mechanical fault or replace a worn component; it can improve the speed and precision of the maintenance process if the wider service system is in place.
The scale of the proposed expansion also places the technology within a competitive and consolidating elevator market. Kone is ranked behind Otis and Schindler globally, followed by ThyssenKrupp Elevator, Mitsubishi and Hitachi, according to the report. Kone and ThyssenKrupp have announced a merger that, once completed, is expected to create the world’s largest elevator company. In India, Kone has operated for around four decades and has overtaken Otis in installations, the report said.
That market context matters because decisions about connected elevators will increasingly be shaped by the installed base of equipment, service networks and the ability to support buildings after installation. A connected lift is not an isolated product. It is part of a continuing relationship involving software, sensors, remote monitoring, technicians, spare parts and decisions by property owners about modernisation.
India’s vertical growth makes this relationship more consequential. The source does not provide national data on the total number of elevators, failure rates or the age of the country’s lift stock. It does, however, establish three pressures: high usage intensity, harsh operating conditions and the presence of lifts that are 30 to 40 years old. Together, these conditions explain why the industry is focusing on both predictive maintenance and replacement.
The wider urban question is whether building systems are being managed as long-term infrastructure or treated as equipment that needs attention only after it fails. Elevators are usually private or building-level assets, but their performance affects public-facing institutions, housing and essential services. A hospital lift outage, a hotel disruption or a non-functioning elevator in a residential building can expose the dependence of modern cities on small systems that are rarely part of the public conversation.
Kone’s planned expansion offers a technology-led response, but the evidence supplied here does not establish how widely connected systems are used across the industry or whether the company-reported outcomes are representative. What it does show is a clear direction: elevator maintenance is moving towards remote monitoring, predictive fault detection and digital intervention, while ageing equipment remains a parallel concern. The next measure of this shift will be whether connected systems are matched by timely modernisation, functioning rescue equipment and maintenance practices capable of keeping India’s heavily used buildings operational.
