Our smart cities product portfolio includes Intelligent Traffic Management System.

Rajat Mishra

- Chief Executive Officer, Efkon India

For 20 years, Efkon India Pvt Ltd (EIPL), a 100% subsidiary of Strabag Group, is one of the country's leading providers of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Electronic Toll Collection (ETC), enforcement, and traffic telematic solutions. Rajat Mishra, Chief Executive Officer, Efkon India shares his views on the huge potential for a wide-ranging intelligent systems for transport management and law enforcement. Excerpts from the interview…

What contributory role Efkon India plays in Smart City Mission of the Government of India?

At EIPL, we help the government to manifest their smart city dreams and ambitions by designing and deploying wide-ranging intelligent systems for transport management and law enforcement. Our smart city solutions help with better traffic management, reduced polluting emissions and consumption of vehicular fuel and oil, smart electronic toll solutions, automated traffic signals, and better electronic enforcement systems. Thereby improving the way people use roads and enhance their quality of lives - in the city of today and tomorrow. We use technology to manage and improve city infrastructure, increase safety, accessibility of citizen services, and improved administration with better governance.   

How do you assess the growth projection of smart city industry, in India?

India's smart cities market is also expected to grow due to the increasing demand for public safety, rising urban populations, and increasing government initiatives. In smart cities, technologies such as video surveillance, real-time license plate, and facial recognition are widely used for public safety, indicating the need for surveillance to ensure citizens' safety. The smart transportation segment is estimated to account for the largest market size, with smart transportation solutions providing an essential boost to the existing and new transport infrastructural projects.

Tell us the potential of business opportunities for Efkon's smart city solutions in India?

Efkon India plans to capitalize on this business opportunity and help city authorities across India with a comprehensive urbanization strategy, take advantage of the latest developments in technology, create employment opportunities, and support economic activities that will improve citizens' quality of life. With our smart city solutions already implemented in cities like Aligarh, Varanasi, Bhubaneshwar, and Tumkur, we plan to provide similar best-in-class products and solutions to other smart cities of India.

Could you brief a project where your solutions were offered and its techno-commercial benefits?

Our smart cities product portfolio includes Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS), which uses artificial intelligence algorithms to predict optimum routes based upon traffic mobilization patterns, vehicle categorization, accident occurrences, and precipitation levels.

For one of the project, EIPL was selected as the Master System Integrator (MSI) for developing, implementing, and regulating several projects in Aligarh city such as Smart Governance (portal and mobile application), Utility Management Systems, Intelligent Transport Management Systems, Surveillance System, Data Centres, and the Smart Network.

Our services included city surveillance on 63 junctions through fixed cameras, Pan-tilt Zoom (PTZ) cameras, and Traffic Rule Control through 108 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), 16 Speed Violation Detection (SVD) cameras, and Adaptive Traffic Control Systems (ATCS) at 20 junctions. There was installation done for Broadcast Management System (BMS) at 25 locations, Optical Fibre Cable (OFC) laying for 70kms fixed network within four months along with Facial Recognition Systems (FRS) at 10 locations. E-challan with 40 devices and OF layering at 64 locations. The entire city of Aligarh are monitored through a centralized Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) that could eventually integrate city-surveillance with police, fire department, traffic management, city authorities, ambulances, etc.

During the on-going Covid-19 pandemic, the Aligarh Smart City team from Efkon India operated the ICCC 24X7 during the lockdown, which was being used for surveillance purposes providing visual feeds of the entire city through the cameras. Telemedicine facilities were also launched at ICCC in association with Indian Medical Association. Citizens could do video calls with doctors and get prescriptions on their mobile phones, avoiding physical movement during the lockdown phase. Information related to LPG agencies, milk, and vegetable vendors, quarantine locations and zones, etc., were also being provided. The Aligarh Nagar Nigam launched an online module for Property Tax collection to help citizens deposit taxes without physically coming to the Nagar Nigam premises.

How do you envision the challenges in data-management in another five years' time?

Every game-changing and transformative technology comes with a specific set of challenges and hurdles. Big data analytics and management bring in many challenges, like protecting data privacy, ensuring data accuracy, and processing and analyzing the right data set to provide actionable insights. Additionally, security solutions and tools dedicated to managing the ecosystem presents security risks, integration and implementation issues.

There should also be a tight focus on all end-users, ensuring every solution aligns with various stakeholders' roles. This means the data scientists and business users need to collaborate on developing analytical models that deliver desired business outcomes. They should also define the metrics that best measures the impact on business. Finally, the most prominent mistake is that organizations fail to envisage is how well the data management solution would scale.

As a solution provider, what are the major pain points you face?

As a major system integrator (MSI) for most of our smart city project implementations, the major barriers we faced were associated with scarce integrated view of the city planning, accumulating huge volume of data from various departments, and lack of interoperable framework. Poor integration of data security solutions/platforms and complexities over legacy systems and networks were other issues.

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?

With as many as 5151 projects worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore are being or going to be implemented across the 100 smart cities in India, at EIPL we are closely monitoring the competitive landscape and gaining more insights to better position our business and plan suitable go-to-market strategies. It will also help us understand the market pulse and provides information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities.

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