Oncam: We are costly but with less Maintenance

Abhishek Kumar, Regional Director, South Asia, Oncam talks with DQ Channels about his surveillance products and its differentiators from the competition.

Can you give us an overview of Oncam? What would differentiate Oncam from other surveillance vendors?

Oncam is part of a global multinational company with our offices spread across the globe. Our headquarter is in London. The manufacturing setup is in Europe as well as in Thailand. Yes, we manufacture in the UK. Generally, if you see at most of the cameras they are 2D cameras so they capture a 2D image and its plenty of blind spots.

The camera starts capturing around 1 and a half meters from the camera while in our case there is no blind spot so if you are standing right immediately below the camera, it will capture you then also. It captures the full 360 degrees. Second thing is that this 360-degree view comes from a 3D revolver. It comes as a 3D the image in an oval shape. So we have patents to the orbit, how we will convert that oval shape image to a normal 2D image, so that is our speciality.

So that would also translate into a more expensive device compared to your competitors. How do you reconcile against that?

If you compare camera to camera then we are costly but if you see the usability of 360 degree, a 360 degree camera replaces probably 3 or 4 cameras. So if you talk of a store, for example, probably one or two cameras 360 will cover the entire area while if you go for the narrow field of few cameras, probably you will need 7-8 cameras. So the total cost of ownership is less. So the cameras are less and the usability is more.

The best part is that there are no moving parts inside the camera; it means the life of the camera is more. If the camera as moving parts then even the best of the best manufacturers won’t give you more than 3 months warranty; while in our case when there are no moving parts, all our cameras have 3 years warranty minimum. And if the number of cameras is less, then your recording space is also less, your networking is less, your cabling is less, your maintenance is less.

How does Oncam offer its solution?

We prefer to pitch in our product through system integrators. So our GTM includes our distributors and then the system integrators. The system integrated source for all the different products. We give our products. We are not the best in the world when it comes to cable manufacturing or switch manufacturing, so we leave it to the system integrators to take it from the person who manufactures it the best.

And what we do give is and that differentiates us from most of the manufacturers that are we are a 100% open platform company which means that my product can work with any switch, it can work with any software, it works with any hardware. So that increases the usability of the product that anyone and everyone can use it. Globally, our
the largest customer is Subway so we have more than 1 lakh stores in Subway with us.

Who are among some of your marquee clients in India who have deployed Oncam solutions?

In India we even have few booked clienteles in Bombay where IOCL is our client; Indian Habitat Centre in Delhi is our client. Then we have got few good clients in the education sector, especially in coaching classes like Bhatia Coaching class. So they use our cameras, just one camera to monitor their coaching classes remotely. They have coaching classes pan India.

They are into PG, MBBS coaching, so they have one camera to see how many students are present, how many of them are inside. We also have installations at Delhi Metro. We have around 70- 75 clients in India using our product. These are mostly in Government and education. These two are our predominant clients. On the retail side, we have done Jockey stores in India. Here we are also very strong in Oil and Gas. We have also got BPCL as our client. Because what we do is in 360, we manufacture explosion proof cameras, so it is a unique product for that matter.

What has been your traction with the Smart Cities and Safe cities here?

So, one of the segments that we see in America and the other countries growing, are safe cities. What happens in safe cities is that our cameras provide a very unique proposition. Our single camera handy capture helps you to monitor all the sides of the junction and if you put the small narrow field of cameras they point towards only one particular
direction.

So the overall image or the overall view of the junction is at times missing. So if you see all these smart cities like Surat, they have opted for our cameras. If you see in general the safe cities now, then all safe cities are having a provision of putting the 360-degree cameras.

Other smart cities we are participating in are Faridabad, Trivandrum, and Bhagalpur. We are also participating in Kolkata, Siliguri which are safe cities and not smart cities projects. We are participating in Lucknow as well. The Government of India did a trial on Surat smart city to see how a 360-degree camera fits in. Now they have put it in RFP in the all smart cities.

What is your distribution strategy regarding the Oncam offerings?

We have two distributors at present. One is based in Delhi and the other is based in Bangalore. In Delhi, we have a distributor called Tatvik and in Bangalore we have Texon. Delhi is the biggest market for us, followed by Bangalore and then Bombay.

Our office is in Bangalore. We are likely to appoint a system integrator this month in Bombay. We are set up currently in Delhi and Bangalore. We are opening up our office in Bombay. We are opening up our own office plus the distribution
channel there. So we will have three distributors, all of them very small in their regions with the national presence which means that if the Bangalore distributor wants to do business in the North, we are open to that extent. We don’t limit them to regional distributors. None of our distributors is regional distributors.

Where will be the large deployment or installations since you mentioned Delhi is your biggest attraction followed by Bangalore and now including Bombay, where will be the largest installations as a project?

So we have done one project for the Indian Habitat Centre which was the last project for us. We are monitoring their entire perimeter. Then we are doing a lot of projects of IOCL where we are monitoring different perimeters as well as their offices. For example, IOCL Gorakhpur, Selum is in Tamil Nadu, Bhatinda is in Punjab, so these are the places where we have work. Then out of the metro cities, we are doing Jammu bus stand, there we are working with Siemens as a channel partner.

We are doing IT business parks of Uttaranchal. Uttaranchal IT division is called Sitpul so the Sitpul business park is done by us which is a large deployment across different cities. Bangalore generally it is corporate deployment. We are installing our products at Google, they all are our global clients. We have some success in banks. Mainly from the cooperative banks; Maharashtra mainly and hence we are moving towards now opening up our office at Bombay.