Videonetics Q&A: Dr Tinku Acharya on Intellectual Property, VMS’ and IP Security

As the Indian market continues to move from analogue- to IP-based systems, Dr Tinku Acharya, founder and MD of VMS specialists Videonetics, addresses security threats and the need to expand India’s intellectual property base.

Founded in 2008, Kolkata-based Videonetics sells surveillance solutions in India, the US and the Middle East.

Acharya is an IEEE Fellow and renowned domain expert who holds over 150 US, European and international patents and  author of many books on technology.

After more than two decades working in the US for illustrious brands like Intel and AT&T Labs the 51-year old entrepreneur returned to his homeland, where he set up Videonetics.

Videonetics sells video management systems, intelligent video analytics, an automatic number plate recognition suite, face detection and recognition solutions, a retail business intelligent suite, mobile surveillance systems and video précis.

IFSEC Global: Being one of the latest entrants to the Electronic Security market, how do you see the overall competition in India?

Dr Tinku Acharya: Foreign competition is one of the major challenges faced by Videonetics.

In India there is lack of awareness of Indian technology available from companies like Videonetics. Our products and technology are much more robust and work well in the local environment since they is indigenously developed by world-recognised Indian scientists and technologists keeping in mind prevailing Indian demographics, climate, culture, communication infrastructure and other parameters.

Videonetics technology is rich with a strong intellectual property portfolio. We need to promote and encourage intellectual property culture in India.

Thus Indian companies should be given more preference over foreign companies, especially when it comes to the safety and security of our country and people. Few government project tenders have pre-qualification criteria based on some international market reports, which prohibits bona-fide and deserving Indian companies from participating in such projects.

We have to create Indian intellectual properties for self-reliance and encourage new entrepreneurs to embark on creating Indian IP and establish “Made in India” in the global market.

IG: What are the segments or verticals that you find most lucrative?

TA: We have rich experience across various sectors like aviation, transportation, commercial buildings, financial, legal, power, petroleum, industrial, education and home monitoring.

We are exploring opportunities in retail and banking verticals. Talks are on with an Indian retail chain to implement the same at their stores for customer mapping – understanding the behavioral pattern of customers.

We are also planning to tap individual users with home surveillance offerings. This will obviously be through tie-ups with existing companies, especially those into hardware.

We are targeting an entry into the US market with our offerings in a number of large retail chains. We are also targeting the cloud gateway monitoring services.

We are looking forward to collaborating with the government to set-up world-class safe and smart cities in India.

IG: Where are the opportunities and challenges in the migration from analogue to IP?

TA: Our telecommunication system has grown leaps and bounds in India and connectivity is going to be available in most corners of the country, including remote villages in coming years, to fulfill the dream of a digital India.

IP-based solutions will help us connect different types of security devices seamlessly into the surveillance system and we’ll see more distributed surveillance systems as opposed to analogue-based central monitoring.

Deployment of IP-based solutions through a distributed computing and communication environment will significantly help to monitor our homes, neighborhood, cities and the country in a more efficient way, from anywhere, any time, for a quick response in a crisis situation.

IP-based solutions will open up opportunities with new applications in the near future.

Robust and reliable communication networks are a major challenge. Video management software should be intelligent enough to efficiently manage fluctuating bandwidth to avoid loss of video as well as maintain reasonable video quality.

Videonetics’ intelligent VMS has been designed to address this challenge effectively. Proper fail-over support embedded in the system is critical, so that we don’t lose any evidence.

IP-based solutions may pose a challenge of security threats, so it is of paramount importance that we promote Indian technology with Indian intellectual property to protect our nation from any theft of data or critical information. An Intelligent VMS plays a critical role on this front.

IG: What other trends are noteworthy in the Indian security market?

TA: The convergence of intelligent traffic management systems, security and surveillance Systems into a single, monolithic, unified systems architectural framework [is becoming] cost-effective and efficient and started to gain in popularity.

Making our cities and roads safer to travel will pave the way for the success of smart cities.

IG: What are your plans for the next five years? Is there anything new in the pipeline?

TA: We aim to be the first technology company from India to go to IPO, preferably in the US. That is the first priority. In three years – (mid-term – the goal is to achieve revenue to the tune of INR100 Crs.

Videonetics’ new R&D initiative resulted in a rich set of audio analytics applications to automatically detect and classify silence or disturbance, identification of human speech – including the number of talkers present in a scene, classification of normal conversation and chaotic conversation to indicate potential threats – unusual noise such as breaking an ATM machine or your door or gunshots or potential accident, riots, etc.

Gesture recognition-based, threat perception-detection-based solutions is a new R&D initiative in Videonetics to bring a new set of products and solutions to the marketplace.

Videonetics created a smart DVR framework for integration of geographically dispersed legacy analogue DVR systems to make them intelligent, with Videonetics’ unique video analytics solutions.

Videonetics’ R&D continues to develop the visual computing platform so that practitioners can develop newer applications with the advent of new technologies.

Videonetics R&D is also focused on enabling new technologies for video management as a service (VMSaaS). There are initiatives to offer cloud-based, innovative new framework, for newer services soon. R&D continues to promote green computing in order to reduce IT infrastructure and power costs.

To know more about the company visit: www.videonetics.com