Mumbai: Gone are the days of gurkhas and traditional alarm systems. Be it offices or residential security, today’s discriminating consumer has moved beyond the traditional ways to ‘always-on’ security systems that provide real-time information and alerts via the internet, PDAs, and cell phones.
In fact, thanks to the increased awareness among consumers, India has already become an important market in Asia, and is ranked fourth in terms of vendor revenues, according to a recent IDC report.
“The industry offers dynamic growth prospects with a turnover of Rs 1,800 crore, and a growth rate of 25% the growth potential is immense in India. As opposed to earlier where security was considered as an expense, spend on safety and security are now increasingly being viewed as profit centres,” says P S h e k h a r, MD, Micro Technologies, a security solutions company.
IDC predicts that the pace will continue with Asia Pacific security solutions market set to cross $5.9 billion by 2011. Accordingly, the competitive landscape is heating up with players ranging from niche local security solutions specialists to large global security vendors as well as infrastructure players jumping into the game. Currently, however, the industry remains dominated by major players like Taco MobiApps, Zicom, Micro Technologies and ADT, among others.
“The potential on India’s security solutions market is also being underpinned by the large number of companies that are building their technology infrastructure and the rapidly increasing broadband internet penetration in the country,” says Sudhir Rao, MD and CEO, Bartronics, a security systems provider in India.
So the big brother is getting a whole lot of little siblings in the corporate world, as companies are installing access control systems and IP
based surveillance cameras which allow them to track everything on campus, 24x7. In fact, on the industrial front, biometrics system for access control and tracking have gone up in a big way. A recent Frost and Sullivan report stated that in 2006-2007 alone biometrics for industrial applications surged to a good Rs 150 crore industry.
Price drop for automated security systems is probably an important catalyst for the growth, say analysts. Most of the biometric and RFID-based security systems were fairly exorbitant just a couple of years back, but thanks to the volumes going up, prices have dropped considerably. For instance, a simple RFID reader that used to cost Rs 1 lakh about three years ago, will now cost hardly Rs 15,000.
Residential is yet another area that contributes hugely to the growth in the consumer security market. “Currently we have over 18 million square feet of real estate under development and almost all of it offers some kind of cutting edge automated security systems,” says Pramod Rao, MD, Zicom Electronic Security Systems. Almost all new residential complexes are coming with systems like access control, video door phones, smart systems that offer control over ACs, fire alarms and gas controls from your smart phones.
“With people paying exorbitant amounts for real estate, they have started to expect basic security systems in place,” says Rao.
In fact, in addition to the basic smart security systems, there is a clear trend where customers are ready to pay an extra premium to automate their security systems. They are glad to pay for extra bells and whistles which include cameras controlled via the internet to scan houses, systems that trigger remote alarms when motion is detected, and ones whose views are accessible over cell phones and wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs).
