Videonetics : Cognitive heritage of innovation & growth
Q. You were a successful scientist, technologist, inventor and teacher. What transformed you into an entrepreneur, that too in the surveillance industry?
I have launched Videonetics with a patriotic mission to show the world that cutting-edge world-class products powered by Indian Intellectual Property, can be developed from India by our young minds to reduce dependency on foreign products and contribute to the nation building. I came back to India with this mission and started Videonetics. After contributing in more than 150 US and international patents while I was working in US, I recognized that our country can gain more respect and become a strong technology player in the global arena with its home-grown products with strong intellectual properties. I am not going to retire from innovation as long as my brain and body cooperates and so perpetuate this culture of innovation in my small but effective young team. Like me, my team thinks, breaths, and goes to bed every day with the thoughts of innovation.
Videonetics is not just a company, it is a movement to promote the culture of innovation as mentioned above & uphold the national call for ‘Made in India’. Established in 2008, we have been developing and delivering ‘Made in India’ innovative products and solutions. Over the 10 years, a Kolkata based company has built its strong heritage of innovation and excellence in Visual Computing Platform. Today, we are the World’s first company to launch Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning powered Unified Visual Computing Platform.
Just dumping foreign technologies in our soil is not going to work effectively. To save our tax-payers money and build effective security, we must design and develop technologies based on our Indian condition. India is a great nation with a more than 1 billion population. If the technology works in our Indian demographic condition, I strongly believe that it’ll work anywhere in the world.
We have to transform our nation and its economy from service-oriented to product-cum -manufacturing oriented to sustain our growth and play the role of a major player in the world.
Q. When we talk about technology uniqueness, what differentiate Videonetics in the market?
Holding a leadership position in the industry, our indigenous solutions have acclaimed patents from countries like Israel, UK, USA, Singapore, Canada so on along with acknowledged by renowned awards. Recently, we have introduced AI & Deep Learning Framework enabled solutions including Intelligent VMS, Smart Urban Video Analytics, Intelligent Attribute Search, Automatic Detection of drivers driving two-wheelers without wearing helmet, Automatic detection of Triple Riding, Detection of Use of Cell phone while Driving, No Seat Belt Detection System, Speed Violation Detection, Highway Traffic Management Software, Video Data Visualization, Smart Dashboard to name a few.
Some of the unique features that make us ‘trend-setter’:
- OS Agnostic – Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS
- Truly Unified Architecture & Integrated Platform transforming mere VMS to a video computing platform
- Robust in Tough Environmental Conditions
- Web-enabled & Browser Agnostic
- Indigenously developed AI and Deep learning framework to learn and adopt Indian demographic conditions
Q. How Smart City initiative is boosting the Surveillance market?
Cities around the world are getting smarter. City leaders and decision makers are drawing on information and communication technologies in various ways, with advancements that improve the lives of citizens, keeping them safe, protecting their assets and enhancing their day-to-day experiences to keep pace with modern lifestyle. Today, I see surveillance application in manufacturing plants, commercial, education, critical installations, traffic management, hospitality, healthcare, retail with other verticals exploring similar solutions. The same technology, when implemented in smart city projects, reduces manual interference, predicts internal and external threats, system malfunctions and alerts authorities in times of exigencies.
As the cities grow smarter and more futuristic, video surveillance will begin to play pivotal roles in ensuring the safety of the cities, securing infrastructure and citizens. Investing in the latest video surveillance technology with not only just highest-resolution cameras, and IT infrastructure, it is of paramount of important to invest in versatile and scalable Video Computing software which is the brain of the overall system for best user experience, enhancing operational excellence to meet actual user expectation, and intelligent decision support system. This will help to make our cities smarter, with a goal of achieving fewer crimes, 24×7 surveillance, and safer environments for city inhabitants, in tune with modern lifestyle. In addition to 24×7 surveillance, video from same camera can be analyzed to generate various types of actionable information, which eventually can be used in various domains. One such example is to keep your city clean. We have developed technology to analyze video to understand whether garbage bins are cleaned in timely manner, save lives of citizens to automatically detect various types of traffic violations as hinted earlier without requiring any expensive specially camera, but normal surveillance camera.
Q. What are the various verticals that you have worked on and have targeted?
We understand that every industry has its unique challenges and that finding the right solution for your needs is an important decision. From reducing traffic violations to improving security in cities, airports, railway stations, enterprises and other places with high security threat. We have been innovating as well as deploying solutions for wide-range of industries including critical infrastructure, government, corporate campuses, airports, traffic management, sports, large manufacturing plants etc.
We have developed unique Video-IoT solution which makes any dumb device or traditional IoT node enabled with Video, Video metadata and going to keep on innovating in IoT optimized for video. We have also developed a unique cloud computing stack optimized for video processing, storage, streaming cum distribution and agnostic to any Cloud provider.
Q. What do you think are the most exciting developments/trends in our industry at the moment?
The top trending technology driving the security industry in the year 2019, is artificial intelligence and deep learning. AI & DL powered solutions empower businesses and city leaders to make proactive, data-driven decisions to increase operational efficiencies, as well as giving them the ability to recognize and prevent potential issues before they arise. Having overpromised and under-delivered a decade ago, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning software have made intelligent video analytics a realistic capability for end-users to deploy at scale.
Secondly, as video continues to gain popularity, the need to conserve bandwidth is driving a surge in cloud migration and edge computing. This promises to open the possibility for advanced video analytics that process data collected from cameras and devices. In 2019, we anticipate a continued migration to cloud computing and edge processing and as a result, we shall see AI-backed video content analytics become much more widely adopted in many industries such as transportation, education, healthcare, retail and more.
Thirdly and most importantly, unification of applications in a single platform will be trending in coming years. Videonetics has developed AI & DL enabled unified video computing platform which is highly scalable and customizable as per the customer requirement. Our latest and powerful Unified Video Computing platform encompasses Intelligent VMS, Intelligent Content Analytics, Facial Recognition, Intelligent Traffic Management System in a single interface.
I strongly believe that our innovation in Video optimized cloud stack will enable the marketplace with various new applications and services.
Q. What is the total size of the Security & Surveillance market in India? To what size do you expect it to grow by 2020?
India’s security and surveillance market has grown considerably over the past few years due to rising security concerns and sustained growth of infrastructure in the country. The industry is expected to cross the US$20 billion mark by 2020. The ever-increasing requirement of security coupled with boom in smart cities has led to a rise of video surveillance market in the country. Government initiatives such as the development of 100 smart cities and Digital India campaign also adds to the overall growth of the industry. Additionally, the market is witnessing immense growth from sectors such as hospitality, airport, BFSI, retail, BPO, manufacturing, IT parks, infrastructure companies and education. Undoubtedly, the security revolution will continue manifest creating new possibilities to detect and deter threats more effectively.
Q. The industry is now moving from analogue to IP-based solutions, what do you think could be the opportunities and challenges for customers?
Electronic security systems have become the norm rather than the exception. The new-age security market has evolved from analogue to digital systems. Consumers are no longer interested in low cost and general-purpose cameras. There is a growing demand of highly sophisticated solutions in government as well as private sectors such as facial recognition, advanced video analytics, traffic monitoring, perimeter protection, asset protection so on.
We see increasing adoption of edge-based analytics in applications like city surveillance, traffic management for ANPR, Red Light Violation, Speed Violation, No Helmet and Triple Riding Detection, No Seat belt Detection, Detection of Use of Cellphone while driving. Additionally, AI & DL based Video analytics has custom-built applications such as Object Detection, Crowd Monitoring, Graffiti & Vandalism Detection, Fire & Smoke Video Analytics, No Safety Helmet/Apron Detection for the enterprise, industrial and commercial markets.
The need of the hour in the changing security scenario is to educate and train distributors, system integrators, partners and even end users. While imparting certified training to integrators and partners would ensure that the service quality is improved. While educating users would ensure that they understand the necessity of security and surveillance.
Q. What are your plans for the next 5 years? Is there anything new in the pipeline?
Since inception, Videonetics have been playing a pivotal role in India by providing indigenously developed innovative video computing platform for making the city safer and smarter. After sustained R&D efforts, Videonetics developed very FIRST “Indian Deep Learning” framework optimized for video to augment its Visual Computing platform.
We have always strived for innovations in Video computing domain. With our sheer determination and unified efforts, we will continue to invest in R&D to generate Indian Intellectual Properties with a patriotic mission to minimize our dependency on foreign technologies.
Holding a leadership position in India, we have started expanding our footprints in South East Asia, Middle East, US, UK markets by delivering and deploying solutions for various verticals.
