Honeywell is a leading safety, security, and connected buildings solutions provider in India.

Ashish Modi

- VP & GM, Honeywell Building Technologies India, ASEAN, and Korea

Honeywell's building technologies have been supporting India's growth for more than 30 years by making commercial and industrial buildings safer, more secure, energy efficient, productive and connected. In the smart cities space alone with a wide portfolio of smart solutions, Honeywell is present in multiple cities such as Bhubaneshwar, Aurangabad, Rajkot, and Faridabad, to name a few. “We are customizing our products and offerings to serve India's unique needs,” states Ashish Modi, VP & GM, Honeywell Building Technologies - India, ASEAN, and Korea. Excerpts from the interview…

How do you assess the growth opportunities for smarter, connected building technologies especially from smart city projects in India?

In India, government initiatives like Make in India, 100 Smart Cities, Digital India, and Atmanirbhar India have put the country on a growth path, including for companies like Honeywell. Honeywell is a leading safety, security, and connected buildings solutions provider in India, present across some of the largest mission critical facilities, government infrastructure, airports, stadia, metro stations, data centres and healthcare making them intelligent and efficient. Honeywell can help enable cities of all sizes improve services and provide a better experience for their citizens, while also creating a more hospitable and liveable environment.

Could you brief us on Honeywell's IoT enabled city scale command & control platform for city management? 

Honeywell's IoT-enabled, city-scale command and control platform is a virtual turnkey solution for city management with out-of-the-box intuitive applications for city-scale geographic information system-based incident management, workforce dispatch, citizen engagement and pre-integrated applications with analytics to help manage city services. The Smart City Operations Centre, the central hub, can equip a team to better monitor and operate multiple smart city systems. It brings together the data and value of IoT, empowering a city with solutions and actionable intelligence needed to be smarter, more resilient, and more sustainable, as well as help create a more productive citizen experience.

Tell us about Honeywell's strategic investment in Trinity Mobility and how it is helping to scale up your smart city solution capabilities?

Honeywell recently made a strategic investment in Trinity Mobility which will allow us to expand our smart cities capabilities by providing access to Trinity's Smart City solutions, which integrate information from various systems across a city in a common interface and allow operators to better assess, operate and manage the city's connected infrastructure. The combined capabilities of Honeywell and Trinity will allow cities of all sizes to improve services and provide a better experience for their citizens.

This strategic investment, which is structured to provide Honeywell with a path to full ownership of Trinity, will allow us to more fully partner with cities that are expanding their smart city deployments or integrating new systems.

Brief us on the Honeywell City Suite and techno-commercial advantages with specific reference to any of your smart city project.

The Honeywell City Suite helps empower a city with a suite of city management-oriented applications and a digital platform to help meet the increasing demand for services and resources. The platform provides a unified solution to help manage the delivery of civic services and engage with citizens. Furthermore, our Smart Cities IoT solution can seamlessly aggregate information from traffic, environment, parking, emergency services, safety and security, and utilities - among other areas - in a single, unified view.

Honeywell's smart city systems serve more than 70 cities worldwide, connect more than 100,000 IoT sensors and touch the lives of more than 100 million people.

Honeywell is engaged with several cities in India to make them smarter and more secure. In the smart cities space alone we are present in multiple cities such as Bhubaneshwar, Aurangabad, Rajkot, and Faridabad, to name a few.

We are equipping many cities with a city-wide surveillance system that helps improve security, reduce crime and control traffic. One such good example is Ujjain city in Madhya Pradesh where our systems and solutions helped the police department achieve effective traffic and crowd management at checking bays, ghats temples, and ashrams during the Simhasth Kumbh Mela in 2016. During the event, the command and control room gathered real-time data to help authorities respond to incidents swiftly.

Tell us about the recent strategic alliance with IDEMIA and how this further strengthen Honeywell's competencies in smart city solutions?

Our alliance with IDEMIA is aimed at integrating our security and building management systems with IDEMIA's touchless access control systems to create frictionless, safer, and more efficient buildings. The intention is to design solutions that will help people to safely have contactless engagement with the building be it automatic elevator calls or personalized conference room settings—these solutions will allow all of this. IDEMIA products support Honeywell's Healthy Buildings solutions and help building owners improve building environments, operate smoothly, and encourage sustained compliance with changing building standards. Use of artificial intelligence-based equipment through this alliance will help strengthen our competencies in smart building solutions and provide occupants with security, productive environment, healthier and more enjoyable experiences.

Together with IDEMIA we hope to address key challenges faced by our customers and design intelligent building ecosystems to solve them.

What are the AI-based products and solutions from IDEMIA?

IDEMIA provides various products that come under the next-gen category and are used to help people have contactless engagement. Products like MorphoWaveTM, a contactless fingerprint device that scans four fingerprints in less than one second; VisionPass, the most advanced facial recognition terminal; or Augmented Vision, a touchless video analytics platform to help in creating safer and more secure environment for occupants.

How the onslaught of the pandemic has impacted the emergence of tech-enabled solutions in recent times?

The current global health crisis has created additional, and unexpected, strain on many cities and is a likely catalyst for greater technology adoption in cities. Put simply, cities need to consider two primary objectives:

• Reduce the likelihood of future health crises
• Respond better to an emergency

To reduce the likelihood of a future health crisis, sources and vectors of infection need to be controlled. We know that viruses can potentially spread by many means including direct person-to-person contact, via surfaces and through the air or water supply. To minimize potential spread, buildings and cities will strive to reduce physical contact points, especially in public areas. Several technologies already exist for this - for instance, automatic doors, frictionless access control and contactless payments are being adopted rapidly. Similarly, people will expect cleaner air, both indoor and outdoor, and water. In recent months, many building owners have taken steps to improve indoor air quality using better filters and UV lights in the HVAC systems, frequent air exchanges, and regular monitoring. For example, many Indian cities now recognize poor air quality as a health hazard and have implemented monitoring and amelioration protocols. We expect this will continue to be a focus area, thus attracting investment and technology-based solutions.

What is your outlook for the next 5 years and what further regulatory and policy reforms do you expect to fast track the smart city mission?

India is one of the world's fastest growing economies with a rising middle class driving consumption, and a greater appetite for technology integration. We believe that India is well-placed to benefit from companies like Honeywell that are acting as catalysts to foster progress and help the global economy recover. We are customizing our products and offerings to serve India's unique needs and solve challenges in the region using advanced technologies such as IoT.

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