WiZN Systems is an IoT firm situated in Bangalore. They provide various smart home services and other benefits like security, convenience, and energy savings. They specialize in smart homes, home automation, and home security. In an interview with Insights Success, Amit Premy, the Founder and CEO of WiZN Systems provided some astute answers about the company, its journey, its future plans, and other endeavors.
- Please tell us about your Company. What are the different types of Home Automation solutions/services/products that your company offers?
WiZN Systems is an IoT focused company, incorporated in Bangalore in 2013. Our product, eGlu, provides benefits like security, convenience and energy savings to home owners. We have a wide range of products which include Smart Plugs, In-wall Switch Modules, Motion Sensors, Door Sensors, Lock Controllers, Curtain Controllers, Gate Controllers and many more to cater to pretty much every need of a Smart Home user. eGlu was the first Indian product to feature on both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.
- Please enlighten us about yourself and how you are dealing with current problems related to the Home Automation services industry.
I am the Founder and CEO of WiZN Systems. I hold a B.Tech degree from IIT Kanpur and have attained an overall industry experience of 22 years. I have worked in various technology and business roles as part of companies like Texas Instruments and Cosmic Circuits.
The biggest challenges faced by Home Automation Industry are 1) Consumer awareness on Smart Home products and 2) Availability of reliable and affordable Smart Home Solutions. Creating consumer awareness for a new product category is a very expensive affair and big companies like Google and Amazon like playing a big role in doing that. What we have mainly focused on is to create a great product and provide amazing user experience at a very affordable price point. From the feedback we have been receiving from our existing partners and users, we believe that we have been quite successful in achieving this goal.
- What is your take on the current scenario of ‘Home Automation Industry’? What steps are you taking to make it better?
Because of availability of tools like Raspberry Pie and Arduino Uno, the entry barrier to demonstrate a Smart Home concept has become very low and hence lot of people are jumping into this field assuming they can quickly build a product. Almost every week we hear about a new company selling Smart Home products. But the reality is that a reliable and good quality Smart Home product is very difficult to design and produce. Building an IoT product requires understanding of varied disciplines like hardware design, wireless communication, networking, cloud services, software protocols, security, embedded systems, industrial design and many more. We were one of the first few IoT companies in India and it took us four years to bring out eGlu. We have witnessed lot of companies who came after us, launched product in a year’s time and have already disappeared.
We are trying to educate our business partners and customers on these aspects so that they do not fall for half-baked products and cheap imitations.
- What traits or qualities does an organization need to have to excel in this highly competitive world?
The most important trait is to listen to your customers and delight them by offering a product which exceeds their expectations.
- Which strategies do you follow to remain competitive with continuously evolving technologies and trends? How are you preparing yourself to become unique?
We are a technology company. The complete end-to-end technology for IoT has been built by us, grounds up. This includes a patent for an extremely low power and long range wireless protocol which is part of all our products. IoT in general and Smart Homes in particular is an emerging technology and innovation is going to play a key role in the success of companies like us. And hence we are highly focused on innovation, not just at technology level but also at the business level and we believe that is our big strength.
- Where is your company heading? What competitive advantages is your company providing to your clients in this contentious world?
We aspire to be the most innovative IoT Company in the world. And only that can help us provide our customers the best user experience at a very affordable price point.
- What were the problems you faced at an initial stage and how did you overcome them?
Hardware startups are not common in India. But unlike software startups, hardware companies need more funds initially to build a physical product. Out biggest challenge during the initial stage was to raise funds so that we could build a quality product. It took us some time, but eventually we crossed that hurdle when Foxconn lead our first round of funding in January 2016.
- Kindly share your views on the future of ‘Home Automation Industry’. Tell us something about your upcoming products/services/plans.
The stage we are currently going through, in the Smart Home journey, is what we like to call “connectivity stage”. This is where all the elements in the house are getting connected to the internet and are able to communicate with a server. The outcome is we can control and monitor them remotely. But real Smart Home is the one which learns the behavior of the home dweller; understand their preferences and creates a secure and comfortable living environment without any human intervention. That is the real future and we are already working on it. Our upcoming products will have edge processing capabilities to allow ML and AI based applications which would take us to the next stage of Smart Homes.
- What is your advice to the young entrepreneurs in the Home Automation industry?
Have a long term vision and think of solutions which are 10x better than existing ones.
