Riding on Technology

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[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]India still is at a nascent stage for automation, and people are yet to invest in technology like in the US or Europe, says Prabhu Ramachandran, Founder and CEO of Facilio.

How different is Facilio from the existing facility management applications?

Facilio looks at the post-construction life cycle of the building, and practically, facility management comes into the picture only after the building gets occupied. It is not a pointed solution but a platform solution that is software-based solution. It covers broadly three aspects of operations and maintenance of the buildings. a) maintenance which includes elevators, ACs and all other assets in the building along with increased workforce efficiency where all the staff is tech-enabled with mobile apps who would work better and smarter. b) Sustainability of buildings-How can you reduce the consumption of resources in terms of energy and water. c) The tenants experience of the building. Facilio currently focus more on commercial buildings (offices, hospitals, hotels). Tenant experience include how do tenant get service from the building owner, reducing bills on energy and water, how quickly a complaint can be raised and the time to resolve it. They also are looking for an efficient visitor entry management, vendor entry management system In one word, everything the tenant engages with the owner is smoothened using our platform.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Today the customers buy two different layers of technology - one is the automation layer which typically comes along with the construction like the building automation, elevator automation, fire automation. The second is the  facility management software from both big and small vendors. What is happening is these software doesn't talk to the existing automation.The result is the facility management system work as a data entry platform - someone has to manually log in the details to raise complain and one fixed, it needs to be looked into the system as resolved.  

But with Facilio it is different. It has the IoT- H  feature — it goes into the building, it has the ability to talk to the automated system. It can speak to individual assets like the elevator, ACs and pull out data every few minutes. Using this data, it can predict much  before the equipment fails by identifying that the machine is performing poor/ slower than it is expected. Unlike in the other application which is manual, Facilio automatically creates a ticket and assigns the work. Once the person receives the ticket, before even going to the site, he can access the machine and analyse the root cause of the problem, and could even debug the problem before reaching the building.            

It drastically improves the efficiency of services, addresses failure of services because we are into predictive maintenance. Thus improves energy efficiency.            [/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image="34163″ img_size="full"][vc_column_text]Our innovative product is enhanced with the ability to use the data from the existing hardware to improve their own efficiency. This is possible because the Facilio can talk to any existing hardware. The market players have a whole bunch of products, but are not integrated fully. Wherein our platform is completely integrated.  

You mentioned that Facilio could talk to existing automation in the building. If the building is a not an automated one, how does your product work?

If the building doesn't have any automation, they can still use our product. Someone has to enter the data periodically to the app manually. In some cases, we recommend automation systems to customers. Our system work in both automated and unautomated buildings. But if it is automated, then the value is multi-fold. 

A customer with say 10 buildings first try Facilio application for 4 of their buildings and come back to us to extend the application for rest of the buildings as well. The advantage is that Facilio is not typed to one automation system but open to all automation system.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Do you have any prerequisite about the size of the building?

The product is for mid to large customers. We see more traction from owners with say 10 buildings or more. If these buildings are geographically distributed and are dependent on outsourced facility management with multiple vendors, then it is more useful. If the number of buildings are more, then the customers can derive more value. In such cases, we help the customers manage the entire facility centrally with a data-driven management system.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Elaborate on your company's geographical presence?

We currently have customers from India, Middle East US and Brazil. We are expanding into Europe, Singapore and other multiple places. With India, we have more demand from all major cities. We do work with residential, but in India, the automation market is slow. Take the case of the US, even the residential buildings have centralised ACs, automated elevators. But here it is still standalone.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Which demographical region expect more business for your product?

We have a sizable presence in the Middle East as we have concentrated more in this region. Followed by the US and India. The US is a more matured and broader market, and we expect a larger portion of our business from here because the market size is very high and is more matured.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]How fierce is your competition?

We have two sets of competition; on one side we have automation company's like Honey Well, Siemens as they see this as the future and started acquiring companies to offer software solutions. These are companies which were historically selling hardware. The second set is those companies which were selling software for building management like IBM, Microsoft or Oracle. The software solution offered by the first set (hardware companies) are not that dynamic; the solution offered by the latter (software companies) are unable to communicate to the existing automation system.

That is where Facilio has the advantage; our platform can communicate to any automation system. We were able to connect on a real-time basis, identify issues on the basis of data, and problems are addressed with proper accountability.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Do you face resistance from hardware companies as they started collating data themselves?

Take the case of Infosys in India which has 150 building spread across, DLF has say 200 buildings. These buildings are built at different times, so the elevators used are different, the ACs are of different companies. The customer is looking for is to have control of each building from a centralised station to know where are the problematic area that requires attention that can reduce downtimes. So if the customer is able to make the vendor understand that Facilio is not going to replace the automation system but complement the existing automation, then the resistance is less.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]What is your market share, and what are your targets for the near future?

20 per cent of the customers are only looking for these kind of solutions. Lack of awareness is an issue. Currently, 350 buildings are connected through our platform which is a good market share for young company like Facilio. These customers are from 4 different regions.               

Dubai government has partnered with Facilio to implementFacilio across Dubai City.  The purpose is to monitor the air quality of the classrooms in Dubai. Also restaurants where smoking is allowed is another place the Dubai government intent to monitor the air quality. Facilio would be part of the Dubai smart city initiatives as well. We are also in talks with Global City in Asia.  I see, in the next five years, there will be  ample opportunity for the company.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]India also has been moving fast in developing smart cities.  What are the opportunities you see for your company here?

India is a tough market for this level of technology because people still not prepared to spend on tech.  Spending on technology by an Indian customer is on a very minimal scale. Secondly, the penetration of automation is still very, very low in India. Even then, we see high opportunity in the coming years.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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