Bringing Russian intelligence to Make in India

The CEO of Russian surveillance expert Vocord talks 'India Investment Journal' through its Make in India safety and security plans. India, with one of the largest security forces in the world, the second largest population and ranking in the top 10 economies of the world, is at the forefront of technological upgrades and achieving economies of scale in the security sector. This is where a number of international organisations see a massive potential, undoubtedly spurred on by the “Make in India” efforts of the government of India. Vocord is a Russian developer and manufacturer of professional video surveillance and audio registration, founded in 1999. The company′s portfolio of solutions includes: systems of face detection, photo and video fixation of violations of traffic rules and traffic flow analytics, intelligent video surveillance and audio registration on the basis of which complex geographically distributed projects are being successfully implemented. Vocord's systems have been implemented in more than 2,000 projects of commercial and government organisations in more than 70 projects of the "Safe city" class in Russia and abroad. The company is actively conducting new technology developments in the field of video analysis: machine vision, pattern recognition, video streaming analysis, situational video analytics and others. As part of its India strategy, the firm has collaborated with TAL Secure Systems, an ICT & Security technology company, to cater to the country's defence and security industry. Security is increasingly becoming part of our day-to-day life. Be it at home, on the street or at work, “security” will be present in each and every task we have as individuals in a society. As cities expand urban zones, they demand further investments in services and infrastructure, enforcement including security. Urban growth is not always planned; therefore it can be a challenge for local and emergency authorities to create a sustainable setting that will cope with current and future needs. In ever-services in growing city, threats are becoming increasingly anonymous, and this demands further attention from municipalities to local authorities and law enforcement services. Vocord's experience in mega, smart and emerging cities have been to closely work with the law enforcement and state run agencies in optimising their response time and capabilities. As we can see today, city authorities are under enormous pressure to cope with the common, expected security threats but also unexpected ones, including terrorism, floods, earthquakes and other environmental issues. This is already a reality for many municipalities in the country. This role of minimising and managing unexpected security and safety threats is gradually making local authorities important players in promoting national security, a role that historically has been limited to the central government. India is a country of a billion opportunities; an opportunity and interest to grow together for the safety and security of the nation and her people. We will be catering for city surveillance and traffic management, mass-transit, public safety, critical infrastructure sites and medium-sized businesses in India. Against this backdrop, TAL Secure aims to provide services to SMEs on a SaaS model (Software as a Service). As a case study, TAL Secure implemented the Vocord FaceControl system of remote biometric identification at an Indian company for automatic accounting of staff work time for the first time. The company equipped with the Vocord FaceControl system is specialised in logistics, with the number of permanent employees of around 600. The company operates on an around-the-clock basis and practices a "floating" work schedule. Accordingly, the use of other technologies, such as a fingerprint scanning, would be substantially time consuming and would cause some problems in the continuous around-the-clock movement of personnel. Launching the remote biometric identification, Vocord FaceControl system in the office building has provided not only a full credible accounting of the staff working time, but has also become a reliable tool for preventive security of the site. The customer has received the required basic functionality with the additional access control system. The implementation of the project in India proves not only the demand for our technology, but also the appropriateness of the selected model of reaching the market of a particular country by the company. Today, we show the first results of the work, which we have been doing for several years. Purposefully for the Indian market, we have segmented our product line and developed the product and a plan of working with potential customers. In the future, we are planning to expand the range of the Vocord intelligent solutions in the field of effective security in the region.

Timur Vekilov is CEO of Vocord company, a Russian engineering company.