Flamenco Tech’s Digital Blanket Enterprise IoT and Smart Building OS creates hygienic workplace: Bala Chitoor

Flamenco Tech’s key focus is to create a better workplace experience leveraging IoT and AV solutions that are simplified and scalable. The pioneering solutions in both areas will transform, add value and help customers provide an enhanced employee experience and gain better control over workplace investments.

Bala Chitoor, Chief Strategy Officer, Flamenco Tech, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: Elaborate on Flamenco Tech's solutions for the enterprise.

Bala Chitoor: Flamenco Tech is an Indian start-up , a true Make in India for the world success story, that provides breakthrough insights and measurable outcomes through SMARTer Infrastructure for global clients.

Flamenco Tech’s Digital Blanket Enterprise IoT and Smart Building OS creates a safe, healthy, hygienic, and productive workplace with enhanced occupant experience and operating efficiencies.

FT was started by serial entrepreneurs post their successful exits from 4 previous product /deep tech start-ups that were sold to global companies including Intel, IBM, Mastercard and Accion Labs.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has been profound, and the path to business recovery is evolving and uncertain. Facility and Real Estate Heads are striving for a safe return of the employees to the workplace using technology as an enabler.

Flamenco Tech provides the right solution framework for Enterprises, Factories, Hospitals, Hotels, Warehouses, and other businesses to achieve this objective.

Our Covid-19 solutions are built on four pillars, each of which constitute a critical component towards fostering staff and employee wellbeing, safety, and assurance.

* Indoor social distancing and contact tracing

* Safe seating and traceability

* Ensuring hygiene and health in buildings

* Improving employee wellness and productivity.

Digital Blanket is deployed across major banking and financial customers, large IT companies, commercial real estate clients, healthcare companies, etc., to name a few verticals. It is competing with the best-in-class global MNCs in India and across APAC.

DQ: How can Di-Fence prevent the spread of the virus? Also, where is it being used?

Bala Chitoor: With workforce back in office, maintaining and tracking social distance within office premises is critical to ensure safety and security of the employees as well as ensuring business continuity.

Di-Fence or Digital fencing is an unique concept for hyper precise & accurate people and asset accountability and indoor contact tracing and auditing. The solution uses patented health tags to trace employees and alert them in real time for any social distancing breach.

When employees wearing the health tags come in close contact with each other, an alert is raised through the buzzer. The software is also notified of the event and logged for contact tracing and relevant analytics.

Di-Fence is a significantly advanced technology providing precision and accuracy as compared to all other technologies in the market including BLE tags and UWB. The solution also provides multiple other use cases for emergency evacuation, asset tracking, time and attendance, visitor tracking, etc. so the investment is sweated even after the Covid-19 threat is out of our way.

The software allows creation of virtual zones on a floor map to help restrict entry, count the number of occupants in a zone and track utilization of an area. Historical and real-time contact tracing is available for isolating specific employees who may have come in contact with a Covid-19 positive worker.

Di-Fence is now being used at an airport, a multinational pharma company, global IT services and consulting leader, large manufacturing MNC, and a few enterprises. Several engagements are now on for global deployments, across pharma, manufacturing and BFSI customers.

DQ: Where does IoT come in, as far as the solutions are concerned?

Bala Chitoor: Di-Fence uses an IoT devices with IoT edge analytics and an enterprise IoT platform that provides wireless connectivity, alarms, analytics and traceability. The Digital Blanket Enterprise IoT platform correlates this the data for floor or a meeting room for congestion tracking, occupancy-based HVAC control, wayfinding, emergency evacuation, sanitisation alerts and more.

DQ: How are you using IoE and IoEE for creating smart buildings? How are you faring against competition?

Bala Chitoor: Flamenco Tech leverages the Internet of Everything and Everyone (IoEE) model to define and create a Framework for SMARTer Workplaces. The concept of IoEE provides real-time status and control of devices, information and people. This is implemented using its Digital Blanket IoT platform.

Our Digital Blanket IoT Framework enables SMARTer Workplaces that are efficient, effective, productive, optimized and calibrated in near real-time. The final solution can provide real-time data, data correlation and analysis and actionable insights towards meaningful user experiences with IoT.

Digital Blanket enables a secure, multi-protocol, multi-device IoT connected and self-healing infrastructure layer with analytics and actionable insights. It also provides a suite of workplace applications (like Space Management, Energy Management, Visitor Management, Safety and Security Management, etc). Digital Blanket is highly scalable with edge computing, and provides a secure user engagement layer on web, mobile and kiosk with an API layer for external data exchange.

We are leveraging IoEE through a Smart Building Network that allows multiple types of wireless and wired sensors and controllers to be seamlessly integrated for a variety of use cases that impact user experiences, efficiency, compliance and safety and security. These include desk and meeting room occupancy sensors, footfall counters, lighting management controllers, indoor air quality sensors, people and asset tracking and much more.

Flamenco Tech is significantly better than competition. We are competing globally. The following are some key differentiators as compared to the market:

* Transformational smart building and workplace management platforms (web/mobile/kiosk/wireless smart building sensor) with many out-of-the-box plug and play modules.

* Vendor-agnostic open platform which leverages client’s existing infrastructure to best extent possible.

* Transitions data to actionable insights - Unique digital layer that enables and spearheads the digital transformation journey.

* Wide support for protocols, healthy building standards, ML, AI & quality benchmarks (like ASHRAE, WELL, LEED, etc.).

* Unique Digital Fencing Solution for people and asset accountability.

* Centralized command and control with multi device accessibility and real-time data visibility across locations, sites and buildings.

* SANS 25 and OWASP10 security compliant and tested framework.

* Wider adoption – longtail of customers. Post-Covid-19 solutions for safe return to workplace.

DQ: How can Digital Blanket help in developing a digital infrastructure?

Bala Chitoor: Digital Blanket, Flamenco Tech’s enterprise IoT platform, spearheads an organization’s digital transformation journey, linking IoT data with real-time analytics and digital twin to model and automate the digital workplace.

Digital Blanket disintermediates several legacy technologies. We help transform commercial real estate, workspaces, user experiences, centralized command and control, energy and sustainability, safety and security, and compliance to standards such as WELL, ASHRAE, ISHRAE, etc. through the integration of legacy OT technologies, such as IoT, ICT and AV. This is very unique in the industry.

Digital Blanket is India’s first and only comprehensive suite for SMARTer Workplaces, now operational in several large enterprises globally, successfully proving its value in workplace efficiency, employee productivity, engagement as well as retention.

IoT and mobility are complemented with contextual analytics. Thus, a Digital Twin is enabled, which is helping businesses and employees visualize their workplace and assets in near real-time. This virtual workplace is synchronized with the real-world scenario and the data is analysed and actions are automated enhancing efficiency, productivity, safety, security and user experiences.

Digital Blanket provides a future-proofed deployment pathway, allowing for integration to other applications and platforms, as well as for future enhancements such as the use of sensors, biometrics, beacons, video, mobile apps and business rule-based analytics.

In the process, we create intelligent infrastructure that impacts your business positively. By selecting the technologies best suited for your business infrastructure, you achieve the flexibility and the freedom to leap frog with minimal cost and effort, when required.

DQ: Where are your smart AV solutions being used? Elaborate.

Bala Chitoor: AV systems are typically silo’ed and the user experience is sometimes on the border of frustration. Our Smart AV solution is the integration of IoT with AV to create great user experiences.

We provide contactless mobile app and audio-based control of AV equipment, meeting room HVAC and lighting control, and bring in other IoT elements like meeting room reservation and occupancy control, cafeteria ordering, meeting room occupancy count, usage analysis, and more. The user experiences are improved leading to higher productivity.

DQ: What are your plans going forward?

Bala Chitoor: Flamenco Tech is continuously evolving its offering based on technology changes, user experience needs and global market demands. We have embarked on a partnership drive and we have signed six new reseller partners in Singapore, Japan, UAE and India. We will continue to pursue this partnership model with select partners who believe in our value.

We are aligning with industry leaders like Cisco, Microsoft and Intel, and leveraging their technologies to enable Smarter Workplaces.

We are working on several new initiatives, including a pure SaaS offering, smart lighting controls, wireless smart building network, and more. We are working on ML and AI initiatives to help predict energy usage, HVAC fault detection and diagnosis, optimization of HVAC energy, predictive analytics for chiller plants, etc. We are working on vision analytics initiatives and will soon launch a very exciting product for space analytics.

All of our initiatives are planned with an eye on global market play.