TECHNOVATOR

Rishi Sharma

Founder & CEO, Faclon Labs

Faclon Labs Focus on Digital Transformation across IoT Space

Faclon Labs, Mumbai based IoT start-up, has made its name in the digital space by providing a one stop solution for all IoT related issues. The company is focussed on driving digital transformation among enterprises. With their expertise in deep technologies, Faclon Labs has become one of the leading companies in IoT space that has done many projects in India and overseas.

In the latest talk with Aishwarya from BISinfotech; Rishi Sharma, Founder & CEO, Faclon Labs talks about challenges and scopes in the IoT sector.

QKindly explain Faclon Labs’ unique services and the role of IoT and AI in it.

Faclon Labs provides a completely configurable and plugn-play solution to make infrastructure utilities smart, enabling customers optimize their Energy, Water and HVAC systems. The USPs with Faclon’s offerings are one of the quickest turnaround times coupled with bespoke deliverables at lowest costs, owing to the 100% configurable and plug-n-play nature of our offerings.

QWhat separates Faclon Labs from other IoT Companies?

We have in-house developed cloud infrastructure along with a strong in-house hardware division for IoT gateways enabling us with deep domain expertise and extreme flexibility to effectively cater to our customers. Lastly, due to in-house offerings of vertically integrated software-hardware solution, the cost to customers is the lowest in the market. Our IoT platform IO Sense is a low code platform where users can curate their own application based on the use case; this also allow the users to have one platform for all their Industry 4.O requirement. IO Sense platform allows organization to have role based or hierarchy-based access to the certain data and curated insights.

QWhich sectors are your key focus areas and upcoming projects?

We focus on utilities of Commercial and Industrial infrastructure, ranging from small retail outlets to large office complexes, and manufacturing or process industrial premises. We have been working across industries to digitize their utilities (Energy, Water, Gas and Steam) and assets.

QHow did your Water Management Solutions help in solving country’s water management issues?

Not just water, we work on making water, energy and HVAC setups smart. With our solution, the operating costs of these systems reduce significantly as well as running and maintenance activities are streamline and automated with much lesser downtimes.

QIs there any expectation from the government? Explain.

Civic utilities can also use our offerings to make their electricity and water infrastructure much more efficient resulting in significant reductions in NRE (Non-Revenue Electricity) and NRW (Non-Revenue Water), which is typically the biggest target of civic utilities.

QWhat strategies did you employ to be viable during Covid-19 and how was the business affected?

Even before lockdowns last year, we transitioned most of our company to work from home where they have been operating in complete safety. For field operators and other in-office teams, we have been following strict Covid norms as well as providing any support we can to them. On the business front, we managed to double our revenues in the Covid year which could have grown more otherwise, but we are more concerned about safely of our team and obviously there were a few projects which are delayed. COVID 19 did affect everyone for the first 6 months, there was a lot of uncertainties in the market and majority of our customers had stopped all the project work which was going on but those 6 months actually allowed us to take a break and curate new strategies which we were not able to explore earlier. We did utilize this time to explore our overseas market and we were able to do projects in South East Asia and Middle East.

QChallenges and scope in the industry?

The industry is plagued with very inefficient and deteriorating infrastructure where we bring in IoT and AI to make it smarter and much more efficient. With the increased awareness of Digitization and IIoT 4.O in the market the acceptance is gong to be increased significantly in near future. Having said that currently IoT solutions face big challenges specially in the Indian market it includes adoption of cloud technology, security risks, lack of awareness of benefits in the market etc. People are still comfortable with the old traditional system which are only dumping the data and there is absolutely no to little analytics available which are the real game changer.

QLastly major trends you see catapulting and dominating the IoT in coming time?

We feel that the customers are getting aware of the advantages of digitization and we believe that in the next few years there will be a mass adoption of various IoT and AI based solutions. Industries have started focusing on sustainability to reduce their carbon emission, reducing overall cost and optimizing the operations; the most unfortunate event of last one century COVID 19 has also forced people to think in this direction to implement solution to better manage their infrastructure and operations.