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Leader Talk: Interview with Puneet Agarwal, Co- Founder and President Global Sales, VVDN Technologies

July 23, 2019

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  1. Please tell us about the Hardware Engineering industry in India. Some of the areas in which it stands out visa-a-vis some improvements that are required.

The hardware engineering industry is the future for India. With 5G around the corner, AI and ML are already creating disruption and everyone adopting IoT, hardware and manufacturing are seeing the light on the horizon. Driving a core tech business, meticulously diversifying its offerings without diluting its value proposition and expertise, has obviously come with its set of challenges. The biggest challenge was to dispel the perception of India being just a software hub. When we started out, we had to deal with the misconception that India had talent and expertise only in software. Businesses elsewhere couldn’t fathom that we had Design Engineering and Manufacturing capability as well. However, with time and the opportunity to showcase our work, we have been able to overcome this stereotype and progress rapidly towards a leadership position. Today, our key challenge is that even though we have all the expertise and key capabilities for in-house design and manufacturing of products like IoT Cameras, Trackers, Smart Wearables, Access Points, Automotive and Industrial Products etc., we are still dependent on imported components.

2. Any major policy interventions that you suggest.
We’d say that the Make in India campaign currently gives us the much needed impetus. It is a fantastic initiative and gives everyone associated in-and-out of the industry to bank upon us, or any Indian manufacturer. However, we do see that electronics manufacturing incentives need to increase and there should be some direct initiatives from the government to further promote core R&D and product development in India.

3. Do you think Indian talent is adequately skilled in complex design engineering? What are some of the interventions that may be required?
India has immense capability and potential. Our manpower gives us abundance of skilled and unskilled hands to cater to anything we plan of.
We have the best brains on the planet and our talented workforce holds important positions across the world. But even the best brains need the right training and a platform to step on. Most of the young graduates are not industry-ready as they complete college. VVDN invests in their training and makes them industry ready to work on designs and implementations that we need in today’s era. In our collaboration with various colleges and fresh graduates so far we have seen that the Indian workforce is really talented and quick to learn. With right guidance they are able to achieve what they aim for.

4. How does Digital Disruption look like for you? Some examples where you have done great work.
Digital disruption is already halfway through; we have greeted it with a smile. Our focus for the disruption cycles is AI and ML, backed with our Cloud possibilities. Over the years, we have established a very unique system of doing Engineering, Cloud and Manufacturing of the smart intelligent solutions. With such a system in place, VVDN gets an edge to bring the innovation with these disruptive technologies to reality.
Today Artificial intelligence is considerably executing important developments not only on the technology front but also in businesses and day-to-day living. One of VVDN’s original designed and manufactured vision-based fleet management devices helps keep a close watch on the complete road activity and the driver with AI implementations on the edge. Another successful example of implementing disruptive technologies is our conference cameras. Covering a round table conference over a video call has always been difficult as the speakers remain out of focus. With the help of AI we have developed an Intelligent Conferencing Camera, that detects the speaker and focuses on him/her. Across a varied range of inventions AI today stands tall and impressive both in and outside VVDN. With significant implementations across autonomous vehicles to medical diagnosis to advanced manufacturing techniques and assistance, Artificial Intelligence is on a roll.

5. Please tell us how your average sales cycle looks like, mapping the steps, challenges and how you address them.
Our average sales cycle cannot be quantified as it varies from customer to customer and the kind of problem they are trying to solve. One commonality that we have experienced is that there is significant education and consultation that goes in at the start with lot of our customers, where we make them understand the technology and map it to their needs/asks in the most effective manner. Show them the complete roadmap of their solution in advance to strengthen their confidence and ultimately provide them holistic support till their solution launches in the market and even thereafter. Having said this, we also support customers with our flexible business model and help them budget the solution well in advance.

6. Your pivots for the future. Any particular technology / area that you think will be a game-changer.
For the future, VVDN continues to leverage its engineering expertise and develop products across various domains, with IoT being a hot domain for the company, and AI, ML, Cloud, 5G, and DevOps being other focus domains. We are a 12-year-old company and build end-to-end solutions – from sensors to cameras and video doorbells, from trackers to streaming devices from gateways to access points, from cloud to mobile apps. This unified IoT cloud enabled solutions provide faster and simpler development of new enterprise, industrial and consumer applications. From an engineering design services perspective of helping customers develop IoT solutions, one of the key elements that determine success is time-to-market. And, to develop these IoT solutions, we work closely with semiconductor companies. Their support is vital in helping us take products to market on time.
Artificial intelligence and Machine learning will bring the disruption and become the game changers in both digital and manufacturing industries. We as an ODM are already on to it and have tested our capabilities with successful inventions like fleet management cameras, next generation camera solutions with 4K recording capabilities and multiple sensors, trackers, and networking solutions.

7. Leadership mantra, that you swear by and how do you ensure that it stays on course.
“Solving for The Customer” is one of our core values. Keeping our customers’ interest at the forefront has helped us create a niche for ourselves in the country. The mantra is simply to believe in yourself, and to keep the end goal in mind and make things happen. We work as a team with a proper road map, each of us knowing where we aim to land.

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