Video Surveillance Trends in India for 2018

Authored By: Abhishek Kumar,  Regional Director, South Asia, Oncam

Alate night fire was triggered at the godown of Tajinder Khanna, who manages last-mile logistics operations through his warehouse based in Meerut. The source of the fire couldn’t be traced as the video clearly showed that there was neither any electric spark nor were their electrical wires at the source of origin.

Fortunately enough, Tajinder didn’t encounter any major losses, as his video surveillance system instantly detected the fire hazard and generated an alert even when the smoke detector nearby failed to. It was later found out that one of his business associates had erroneously packaged Class I flammable material which eventually resulted in the warehouse fire.

Tajinder not only sued the business associate, he also dragged the fire alarm panel and smoke detector firm to the court for potential damages – that could’ve ultimately led to the loss of both, life and property. His case impeccably elucidates how day-to-day life and business operations can fall prey to human errors and omissions, and that of machines.

This is one of the major reasons why organizations and businesses from numerous market verticals are today adopting video surveillance solutions in India. At present, the Indian Video surveillance industry is growing with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 27.16 per cent and is estimated to have already clocked $841 million in terms of market size.

But the industry is still dominated by outdated analogue-based surveillance systems that occupy a lion’s share of about 68 per cent in the market. And this is also what’s driving the change. There is an increasing migration of traditional users towards the modern IP-driven surveillance devices because of their advanced capabilities and increasing number of use cases that they can fulfil.

For instance, today’s IP-driven Video surveillance systems are not only capable of effectively monitoring a given region, they can also instantly recognize the use case(s) that they’re deployed for (as in the case of Tajinder Khanna).

So, whether it is recognizing fire hazard at a warehouse or counting people at a retail store, identifying aggressive behavior (or theft) and spontaneously letting the security officer or monitoring staff performance in a hotel, hospital, or an educational institute, the IP-driven solutions have unlocked unprecedented opportunities by leveraging video analytics, which isn’t possible using conventional analog-based devices. However, this barely sums it up, as there’s also a cost benefit associated with making the change.

The ongoing R&D in the field of video surveillance and security devices is increasing the functionality of such tools. This has improved the graphics resolution of security feed and decreased the requirement of the total number of devices.

The advent of 360^o cameras equipped with video de-warping technology is eliminating the need to deploy 3 to 4 PTZ (or the standard CCTV) cameras to cover a single region, as a single device can now effectively do the same. It has also reduced the post-deployment costs for businesses since a single video feed generated by such devices consumes lower network bandwidth and storage space.

They also don’t have blind spots and panning, tilting, and zooming can be done even though a recorded feed. This is an aspect that is becoming very lucrative for the customers and hence, catalyzing market adoption.

In terms of deployment, the total number of cameras per site has substantially increased, indicating more acceptance of electronic surveillance in the country. Few industry players are, moreover, coming up with solutions that will provide additional application-based features and services to the user.

This can include an array use cases such as helping evolve the teacher training program in a school by deploying non-intrusive video analytics solutions in a classroom, alongside using these devices for safety and security. These are some of the few factors that are further adding to the impressive growth rate of the Indian surveillance industry, paving the way for it to nearly triple its current market size to reach $2.4 billion by 2020.