Exclusive Interview with Varun Gupta, Director of Kent RO Systems

Cameras are incredible tools that enable us to capture everything that is taking place. People are becoming busy day by day and therefore keeping an eye on everything becomes difficult. Therefore, one of the necessary applications of camera technologies is the security of vehicles as well as homeowners.

There are even cameras that, with the help of facial recognition are useful for taking attendance or for granting entry into events. One industry or field of work that would benefit the most out of facial recognition, is that of attendance systems. The applications of face recognition-based attendance systems are found in schools, offices, events, etc. By far, the most interesting implementation of facial recognition in attendance systems is that of event attendance. The execution of this system poses many benefits, especially for large events.

In a conversation with Analytics Insight, Varun Gupta, Director of Kent RO System demonstrated the evolution of Kent Cam Technologies that focuses on the transformation of the usage of camera technology with revolutionary products.

Kindly brief us about KENT Cam Technologies, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

KENT RO has diversified recently into the space of IoT products with the setting up of a new division i.e., KENT Cam Technologies. KENT Cam Technologies, aims to transform individual and commercial usage of camera technology with revolutionary products that will safeguard homes, people, and assets alike and improve the operational efficiency of businesses.

"Adding value to the consumer's lives" has been a motto, so deeply ingrained into its DNA that the entire lifecycle from product conceptualization to market launch has been done at a rapid pace. KENT has successfully launched KENT CamEye Car, a Next-Gen Camera for the security of vehicle & its occupants, and KENT CamAttendance, a touchless face attendance system to manage attendance at offices/sites during the challenging times of COVID-19.

Tell us how your company is contributing to the IoT/AI/ML/Robotics/Cloud computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.      

In our quest for contribution to nation-building, we emphasize a lot on the development of made in India IoT products. Not only that, but we also hire freshers and train them on AI and cloud technologies. They don't have any real industry exposure from their college education, but our hands-on approach to training makes up for that.

We promise to deliver absolute safety and security with our products. With KENT CamEye Car, we help individuals get peace of mind by ensuring the safety of their vehicles and family, and at the same time, we help businesses to increase their operational efficiency. With KENT CamAttendance, we boost employee morale and help B2B clients in managing their attendance needs. Lastly, our soon-to-be-launched home camera product is going to revolutionize the home security segment.

Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

Since the launch of our first product 2 years ago, we have faced a setback with COVID-19 resulting in a slowdown of consumer demand. Also, we have been majorly involved in new category creation and consumer education about our products and solutions, which take time and sustained efforts from the brand.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from the competitors?

Our biggest USP has been our rapid product development cycle from idea to go-to-Market and the in-house development of software platforms, which is a core of our solution. Tight control on this aspect has resulted in delivering a superior customer experience and driving the solution adoption faster.

Please brief us about the products/solutions you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it.

We have successfully launched India's first connected car camera i.e., KENT CamEye Car. It has widespread personal and commercial usage that allows to keep a track of vehicles through live video streaming, playback of recorded videos from cloud or SD card, AI-enabled alerts on phone, etc.

Then, we launched KENT CamAttendance, which is a leading next-gen touchless face attendance management solution and is a flexible offering, coming in multiple formats – devices with a cloud app, mobile app, devices in standalone mode, and terminal app with cloud app. In near future, we are looking at launching our live video call solution enabling shopping over video calls and also planning to enter into the home camera category.

How do you plan to revolutionize the Indian market and what are your plans to tap the market?

We plan to revolutionize the Indian market by launching some more IoT products, which will be centered around solving consumer's pain points and making life simpler and safer for them. Our products are based on deep consumer insights and go through rapid development from ideation to launch. We will be entering into many newer segments, where we can leverage our brand's equity and deliver an attractive consumer value proposition.

What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

The next 12 months are going to be very crucial for our business, as we look at some exciting new launches – Wi-Fi home camera, video conference solution, shopping by video solution, etc. We are aiming at strong growth and building our market share in the newer segments we are planning to enter, namely high-end video conference cameras and conference speakerphones.

AI is projected to be the next market. How is AI contributing to the making of your products and services?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the backbone of our product portfolio. It has played a pivotal role in differentiating our products from the competition and delivering unmatched value to our customers. Some of the marquees features making use of our next-gen AI engine are:

1. Face recognition: Car owners get to know when an unknown driver gets behind the wheel. They can also check the recorded trip videos to identify the passengers.

2. Driver fatigue: The vehicle owner is notified when the driver shows signs of fatigue.

3. Human detection: Home camera can detect human bodies and give alerts to users.

4. Motion tracking: The camera follows the motion of a moving object till it goes out of its Field-Of-View (FOV)

These USPs in our product give us an edge over the competition.

Please share some major achievements of KENT Cam Technologies under your leadership

We have been very fortunate to garner love and appreciation from both our B2C and B2B customers. While we have managed to sell tens of thousands of KENT CamEye Car Cameras and helped businesses increase their operational efficiency; we are also thankful to hundreds of leading B2B clients who have accepted our next-gen touchless face attendance management system i.e., KENT CamAttendance.

Can you throw light on the latest employment trends in your industry?

Industry, in general, has been buoyant and been on a hiring spree for good talent. We have some more AI (Artificial Intelligence) enabled products in our pipeline and we are continuously looking at getting the right talent for our requirements, to enable the shortest time to market. A trained workforce is difficult to find and hence we believe in hiring freshers and training them internally with a hands-on approach.

If robots/AI completely replace the need for manual processing, what will happen to the future of the workforce?

I firmly believe that many existing jobs will become redundant in the future. The only success mantra for the workforce will be to keep reskilling themselves. But newer avenues for the workforce will also keep opening as most jobs will be human-first and then replaced by robots/ AI. In other words, processes will be perfected by humans and robots will be trained later on them.