 "Godrej Interio working on smart home concept")
The company is working on a project where various divisions of the Godrej Group, including real estate, home decor and appliances, have come together to create integrated smart home solutions, sharing ideas and exchanging expertise from their respective fields.
"There's a project on in the complete smart home space where you integrate the appliances and various elements of the home. It's a little larger project for which we're working across our various divisions," said Anil Mathur, chief operating officer of Godrej Interio.
The connected home project will take a couple of years to make it to market, Mathur said. "It should take a couple of years. I think we're spending more time on the consumer research. One has to keep thinking about how to integrate these means with the other horizontally deployed technologies," he said.
With the so called Internet of Things (IoT) becoming a focus area in India, Godrej, which has products that fit this segment wants to take advantage of offering complete home automation solutions to paying customers. Such smart homes are possible due to home devices such as refrigerators, air conditioners, toasters, television, close circuit cameras connect to the internet allowing users to access them on the go.
In developed markets such as the US, technology players such as Google and Apple have over a short time built a strong presence in home automation and IoT space. Google bought smart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion in January last year while Apple introduced HomeKit, a technology standard to allow-third party manufacturers build devices to work with its ecosystem.
Despite this, Google says that buying Nest was more of a long-term deal and that its investment will only be realised in the coming years. While there's already a market for smart thermostats and connected security cameras, to justify the kinds of investments these companies are making to grow the technology, it will take time.
"The market in India is not that aggressive at all. Only in the niche market, where homes cost in excess of Rs 5 crore, is there any demand for home automation solutions to improve comfort. It's very difficult market to cater to because when it comes to the middle class they really aren't aware of such things," said Balbir Singh Khera, CEO of Surmount Energy Solutions, a player in the smart home/workspace automation space.
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Khera says his company is now focusing on automating apartment complexes and townships with the hook of cost savings. Even for Myntra, which opted to use wireless sensors from surmount for helping automate its warehouse, improving energy efficiency by as much as 80% .
"Corporate India will definitely adopt automation first since they're looking to improve energy efficiency as that's a huge cost for them. We do see employees looking at these sensors being used at their workspace to aid automation and then asking if they could install something like that in their homes," added Khera.