Hello: Spintly

This is the sixteenth in a series of interviews I am doing with new and innovative companies in and around the Smart Lock, Security, and Access Control industry. It's time they have a voice and we meet them. If there are any companies you'd like to see highlighted in the future, let me know. I plan to do this regularly. I am open to your feedback and appreciate the heads up. Thank you!

Spintly, based out of India with an office in Los Angeles, is on a mission to simplify things. Their founders have a deep knowledge of technology. Like many of us, they felt there is a more modern way to bring efficiencies to access control where you balance convenience and security. I have enjoyed getting to know Rohin, CEO at Spintly, and I am eager to see the impact they will make on the industry. Read more below why.

1. Tell us a little about your business.

Spintly was founded in 2018, it is a wireless cloud-based access control platform which allows users to unlock doors using their smartphone or RFID credentials. It is designed to completely eliminate the wiring from access control panels to readers. Spintly has created a major shift in how access control systems are deployed, managed, and used. With its unique BLE-mesh enabled technology and hardware devices Spintly cuts deployment time and cost by more than 50%.

Spintly currently caters to Businesses including, Co-working spaces and SMBs. Spintly also acts as a technology and OEM partner to other manufacturers. 

2. What got you into the smart lock/access control business?  

In 2017 Rohin Parkar, (Co-Founder and CEO, Spintly) decided to quit his job at Broadcom in San Jose, CA, and return to India to start an IoT product company. He got together with his old friend Malcolm D’souza, (Co-Founder and CTO, Spintly) who had returned to India in 2014 and was already trying stuff in the IoT space. They both conceptualized a BLE-mesh enabled platform for Smart Buildings and Smart Homes. The goal was to create a platform that allows devices and sensors to communicate over a mesh network and simplify Smart building solutions. During initial customer trials, we noticed that access control was a key part of any building infrastructure and was usually a stand-alone system. We saw this as an opportunity where we could use our IoT platform to disrupt the access control space. 

After the first few customer deployments it was clear that the access control industry was begging for a wireless solution that not only allows managing credentials wirelessly but allows managing the entire access control network wirelessly over the cloud. This resulted in the launch of Spintly which is a comprehensive wireless platform for access control with a full-stack solution consisting of Device firmware stack, Mobile stack, and the cloud IoT Stack. Spintly quickly went ahead and raised a couple of rounds of seed funding to accelerate the product development work and launched Spintly in India in 2018. Spintly has deployed fully wireless Access control solutions in buildings with up to 50 doors and 4 floors with zero wired infrastructure. The platform has been tested across concrete walls and works flawlessly. 

3. What markets and verticals do you serve? 

Spintly currently provides solutions and services to Small Businesses (SMBs), Enterprise customers, Co-working spaces, Co-living spaces, Industrial customers, and commercial real estate companies. Spintly has also started serving other verticals like Hospitality and Residential by developing key partnerships with 3rd party software products.

We are currently operating in India and have started shipping our products into the Middle East and North African region as well as the North American market and we are looking for partners to expand our network. 

4. What is one thing that you were surprised to find out about the security/lock/access control industry? 

This is a very interesting story. Our first exposure to access control happened when a customer of ours asked us if we could allow them to unlock their office doors with their smartphone and we thought we could give them a retrofit solution that will work in parallel with their existing access control infrastructure. This prompted us to walk into their server room and take a look at the Multi-door access controller. In this case, there were 30 doors and 8 boxes of 4 door controllers which were occupying two 42U cabinets. And wires were running from each controller to their respective readers. We were surprised to see the amount of hardware and wiring required for access control and were pretty confident that we could completely eliminate this hardware and replace it with a single Gateway that could fit your palm. And that was the first trigger to create Spintly.

5. Where do you see your business in 5 years? 

In 5 years we not only see Spintly being the leader in wireless and contactless access control space but also a technology leader enabling other applications and uses cases using our Mesh technology. We see access control as an integral part of smart buildings and there will be one key technology that will power smart buildings and Spintly will have a major role to play in this ecosystem.