Anoop G Prabhu: Spearheading Disruptive Technologies to Unravel Futuristic Solutions in the Security and Surveillance Sphere – Analytics Insight

Vehant Technologies was formed in 2005 as an outcome of incubation from IIT-Delhi. It is the leading company that develops state-of-the-art security screening solutions, smart and safe city solutions and enterprise analytics solutions with their central focus on artificial intelligence/machine learning. Vehant was cofounded by Anoop Prabhu and Kapil Bardeja with five Professors of Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-D as founding mentors, forming the companys backbone in the academia and industry research group. The main motivation of Vehant is to develop indigenous products and solutions out of India in the areas of computer vision and image processing, especially in security and surveillance.

It was a strategic necessity for the country to have these security products, made in India, so Vehant kick-started its journey by designing anunder-vehicle scanning system, which was till then imported in the country. Over the years since its inception, the company has supplied and installed around 1000 units in India and 14 other countries. Vehant also added an AI-based automated number plate reading system, which got morphed into Trafficmon: Traffic enforcement and management system that is now being deployed in almost 42 smart cities across India. In 2015, the firm developed the X-Ray baggage scanner that grabbed 25% of the market share in the last 2 years and got successfully sold to airports as well.

Anoop G Prabhu is the Co-Founder and CTO of Vehant Technologies. Since his college days, he has had a keen interest in imaging and computer vision technologies. During an internship at the IBM Research Labs, Anoop worked on R&D problems in the multimedia and image processing space. Subsequently, he also worked on another short stint at Mobileyes Research Centre, which is a pioneer in camera-based driver assistance systems in Israel, and this is when Anoop firmed up his interest in building solutions in imaging and AI technology circle.

Talking about how it all started, i.e., in the early 2000s, Anoop mentions that the future of the global vehicle surveillance market seemed promising with opportunities in the passenger car and commercial vehicle industries where security became more important due to terror attacks, security threats, etc. And so, he states that the demand for high-end technology solutions, growing R&D, changes in the pattern of buying, economic growth, and spreading awareness towards vehicle safety fuelled the markets growth.

In such a case, Vehant identified security as one area which was gaining huge prominence. In 2005, he Co-Founded the company along with Kapil Bardeja (Co-Founder and CEO) to build ZenScan, which is the under-vehicle scanning system.

According to Anoop, some of the difficulties that he and his teammates faced during the journey were more or less similar to what most of the entrepreneurs faced while starting a venue. Apart from these, he mentions that the UVSS was a product that was focussed on the security of the high-profile establishments to which there wasnt a practically established demand for India and Anoop considers this to be one of the initial challenges which he had to tackle. Establishing a market for the same was a painstaking process, but it allowed the company to become a market leader in that space, adds Anoop. Recruiting the key R&D talent in the initial days was another big challenge for Anoop and his team when the AI/ML boom was yet to take off.

Anoop states that businesses across the globe have adopted technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, the internet of things, big data, augmented reality, and more. Just about every industry and company will change because of these technologies and hence Anoop stresses the need of the leaders to understand and have conversations on taking technology-related decisions. The ability to understand what tech can do for an organization is essential, and leaders must continuously embrace new platforms and tech tools, claims Anoop.

According to him, every leader must consider to which disruptive innovation might influence their value chain and plan to respond to them or figure out whether they should use them in their business or not. Anoop pinpoints that they should understand their capabilities and limits to meet the outside dangers and opportunities of digitization.

He further articulates that business leaders must not only have to evolve quickly in this new and dynamic environment, but they also need to champion change throughout the organization to bridge the gap between old and new businesses and work realities.

Embarking on success and innovation, Anoop says, In my experience, one key aspect we always try to adhere to has been to choose techniques that lie somewhere in the middle of the wide AI/ML technology spectrum: they give us a good mix of accuracy, performance, and superlative value. We have seen this applicable in other areas as well including choice of imaging or computing hardware, UI/UX, etc. Another key advantage of this approach is that these are bound to be more robust than the most sophisticated ones or the latest kid on the block approach. Plus, its easier to find talent whove worked with these techniques or solutions.

Ultimately, Anoop opines that this approach provides more value to the customer and gives them more bang for the buck. He recounts how Vehant tries to use technology to stay one or two steps ahead of the competition so the company also has its flagship models, where it goes away from this philosophy and chooses more of the shinier, glittery building blocks.

Anoop always stands at the forefront of leveraging technologies. While talking about artificial intelligence, he clarifies that AI has offered Vehant many unprecedented opportunities to engage consumers in new and different ways. Today, the company has massive datasets at its fingertips as well as the extraordinary processing power to extract patterns, connections, and meaning from that data to get to the intent of consumers.

Anoop notes that AI is the buzzword of today and gets thrown around everywhere. He mentions that any serious solution or product offering today needs to have AI baked in to pass muster from customers, partners and technology experts alike. Having said that, Anoop expresses how experienced practitioners will understand that there are a wide variety of techniques ranging from the simplistic to the latest bleeding-edge deep neural networks that can be thrown at any given problem.

Disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence/ big data/ cloud computing, according to Anoop, are likely to play a major role in improving the quality of life of people, global economies, and business models of companies. As technology is evolving at a very fast pace, he says that the advancement is changing the way we work, live, and do business ushering us into the age of information.

Considering bigger developments, Anoop remarks that autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been in development for a while, however, they are expected to bring about several benefits including fewer road accidents, more efficient fuel consumption, and reduced traffic congestion. Lastly, he adds that healthcare is also seeing numerous possibilities of integrating AI into its existing systems.

Anoop remarks that Vehant intends to continue its position as a market leader in the UVSS range of products, to grow its market share to around 30% in the X-Ray business, and also to add new X-ray scanning use cases for people and vehicles. He adds that the company also wishes to expand to the South East Asian region for smart city business, add new use cases on smart city and private AI-based analytics space, and retain a 60% market share in the smart city portfolio. In the long term, Anoop says that Vehant aspires to be an 800-1000 crore Indian MNC with a diversified portfolio of India-made products in the Security, surveillance, and traffic management space across the world.

Every year, far more Millennials fail than succeed in entrepreneurship. But if you arent one of the lucky few, dont lose hope: Failure has transformed from a source of shame into a badge of honour, says Anoop He opines that they should create jobs of the future, not simply train for them as it will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead. Anoop affirms that they should ask themselves the most important skills needed to succeed in the workforce of the future because what is trendy today may not be the same in the next few years since technology is evolving rapidly.

One should also keep the communication lines open, and you will set yourself up for more interesting work and a faster career progression in no time. Focus on end goals, and while everyone has favourites, do not be tied to only one technology tool or framework, concludes Anoop.

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Anoop G Prabhu: Spearheading Disruptive Technologies to Unravel Futuristic Solutions in the Security and Surveillance Sphere - Analytics Insight