Video Surveillance As A Service - Emerging from the Shadows

I ran into a Singapore-based upstart called Home Camera (not sure if they are around) many years ago. They had built an IP camera surveillance service for homes in Singapore, where the cameras were leased to the subscriber and the service delivery was through a fiber ISP. Services included an off-site server farm to track camera feed, and a call center to pick up distress signals and connect with residents in case of an incident. While it sounded attractive, I wondered who would pick this service in crime-free Singapore and how much more suitable it would be for Indian cities.

So when I first heard about Secure 56 ( 56 Secure ) from someone in Indiranagar, Bangalore, I was super excited to learn more. I used the service for over a year, and I was blown away by the experience.

Service 56, (the name 56 comes from the Bengaluru zip code which starts with 56?:)is a unique tech+people service, where they have professionally trained, lightly armed, mobile driving guards that patrol your area 24 x7. You can track them on a mobile app and push an SOS key in case of emergency situations. If not, you can track them on the app, which gives you the reassurance that your nearest guard is not over 300 meters from your home and can reach you in 2 minutes. The beat screen shows the live location of the guards.

The tech piece is even more interesting — they install smart cameras at your home location that provide face recognition, (frequent visitors, residents, and vendors can be flagged here) and even pets and known cars. The camera logs movement to a cloud storage service that only you have access to (the cameras have stored memory and are Wi-Fi capable).

The suite of services from Secure 56 is hugely beneficial:

·??????if you are arriving home late, and the street is deserted, you can fire up a request to have a guard walk you up to your home.

·??????if you are on travel, you can ask for an hourly photograph of your home, made available to you via the app — “with any specific request like keep an eye on my parked bicycle”. And your app will update you hourly on the phone. You will receive a string of pictures with a time stamp that you can review later.

·??????if you have a stranger hanging around your neighborhood and it is bothering you, just push the SOS key on your 56 App and they will come in and take appropriate action.

·??????The guards are having an official engagement with local law enforcement and behave as your first response team. They have been hugely useful for our community -including helping in case of a fire accident, petty thefts, lost dogs, a senile elderly person who has lost his way, and cases of rash or drunken driving.

·??????My experience with the guards has been exemplary. These are professionally trained, smart, well-behaved gents riding (sometimes EV two-wheeler) with laser batons.

Secure 56 details are on their website for those interested. (Disclaimer: I am neither an investor nor an advisor but a customer and am sharing my experiences here).

The startup started operations in Indiranagar, Bangalore, and now has an impressive 10k+ homes serviced, with a guard team of about 200.

This business case brings up a few observations I want to share:

1.????The QoS of Secure 56 is so high, I have personally recommended it to dozens of friends. From what I know, it is already available in at least 15 zip codes in Bangalore.

2.????The unique blend of tech + guards is a striking combination for India. Also, the pricing is attractive. It appears the company is building slowly under the radar but I will not be surprised to see this service in the top 20 cities by next year.

3.????Further validation of this, is that Airtel launched the Home Surveillance System XSafe in limited markets in Gurgaon (https://www.airtel.in/xsafe/ ) sometime last year. Of course, this is a camera-only service (no human element or guards) and is priced lower.

4.????IoT as an application can manifest in very different forms in different markets. The home surveillance market at an average billing of Rs 500 per home cloud service per month (camera hardware billed separately), and an installed base of 100k (could be about Rs 60cr ($7.5Mil) rev/year). India already has a very large security services industry (people, guards, personnel). This model of combined people + tech might make for an interesting option.

Geopolitical Bearing

The problem with this remarkably fast-growing industry is an extraordinary dependence on Chinese vendors who have made deep inroads in the country. The top 2 suppliers of surveillance cameras for the Indian market (growing at over 20% annually, currently about $600 Million, CCTV equipment only) are both Chinese brands — Hikvision and Dahua (with a combined share of between 40–50%) are partially owned by government agencies in China. The paradox of course cannot be missed — as we face a hostile Indo-China situation on the northern border, that mildly erupts every now and then, we have allowed surveillance equipment supplies into the hands of their companies.

It is important to note here that China is probably the world’s largest Video surveillance market, with the highest density of surveillance cameras per 1000 people. The scale of deployment, data collection, and intelligence gathering is to be seen to be believed. And how this intelligence influences policy and citizen rights is anybody’s guess.?

This is something Indian regulators need to keep in mind. What is the point, of declaring Country of Origin labels on toys and paper when we allow large-scale market capture of vital equipment in surveillance and security businesses?

The Indian surveillance market will see explosive growth through this decade — driven by 24-hour lifestyles, urbanization, and urban (as well as rural) crimes on the rise. Digitization of crime records, digitalization of police stations, and law enforcement will also require these digital records to be made and archived. These specialized services will have a market willing to sign up and take on the service.

Specialized service providers with direct client billing (as in LCO in the CATV world, FWA operators in ISP world) are critical players in the value chain. They come in early, build in-house SI expertise, deliver specialized services and once they build scale, become attractive targets for large carrier M&A (remember ACT Broadband?).?

In many ways, they also drive regulation (big questions like data privacy, encryption, and authenticated access to cloud data) which are slow-burn embers under the hood today but will eventually get the attention they deserve.

I see a huge upside to these services, as a national criminal register gets built out, with RT shared databases of criminals, criminal activity, migration of bandit bands, and disguised criminals seeking employment in schools in other states -many of which can be prevented well before disaster strikes. These are upstream benefits that will make for a safer nation and more comfortable living for its citizens.

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