<div>Wearables May come in different forms, colours and categories, but they all do the same thing. Make life easier through the use of technology. The devices capture, gather and store information about an individual’s daily life on a cloud-based application, where the user can find it to make informed decisions.</div><div> </div><div>The promise of wearables isn’t lost on anyone. Especially Indian entrepreneurs. Many of them are already out in the market with their devices, striving for that elusive blockbuster product status. Having joined the party fairly early, they believe they stand as good a chance as any large technology firm in the space. After all, every wearables vendor is as much in the dark as the next about what will succeed in the marketplace. That said, could they herald India’s long-awaited breakthrough in technology hardware on a global scale? Let’s find out.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Watch Your Health</strong></div><div>Vishal Gondal, Mohammed H. Naseem, Bobbie Kalra, Arvind Sanjeev and Krispian Lawrence are among those who think life can be better with wearable gadgetry. Their day is spent tracking and guiding their engineers in getting their wearables better software, longer battery life and, perhaps, a more sustainable business model. The last mentioned is as important as the first two to find the right financial backers. The question they ask themselves every day is: will users find their devices to be worthwhile enough to pay for the services?</div><div> </div><div><img width="599" height="339" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=743ed13d-6de5-4ff6-bd9e-159304bf3fdc&groupId=222861&t=1419427752536" alt="" />ABI Research estimates that over 50 million wearable devices were shipped in 2013, with the number going up to 540 million in 2018, when the size of the market will be around $25 billion. All these devices will have business models that will be disruptive to begin with. These devices, ostensibly, give consumers the power for one brief moment before the data they mine becomes the basis of valuation of these startups, which are</div><div>basically waiting to be sold to large companies. “Today, wearable processors and systems on chips need a proof of concept. There are too many wearable companies and the question to ask is whether there will be one unified wearable for all applications,” says Satish R.M., principal research analyst at Gartner India.<br /> </div><div>However, the devices have begun to change lives while people drive their cars, send their kids to school, go to the park for a jog or interact with their doctors. And, with all the data residing in one data centre or the other, there’s a lot for a wearables firm to chew over.</div><div> </div><div>Vishal Gondal, former CEO and founder of India Games, a part of Disney India, is an avid half marathoner from Mumbai. During his training sessions in 2011, he realised that one needed personal attention and motivation from a coach, rather than a gym subscription, to stay healthy. After his stint with Disney came to an end last year, he decided to build a technology platform that brought people and gym instructors together. He went to China and scouted for a manufacturer to build a device that could track an individual’s life and, eventually, become a part of his style board.</div><div> </div><table width="600" cellspacing="6" cellpadding="6" border="2"><tbody><tr><td><strong>For And Against</strong></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Why we need wearables</strong><br /><br />• Because our big smartphones are in our pockets or bags, and not always reachable when we need them<br />• Because wearables look good<br />• Because they can give us contextualised information without having to interrupt what one is doing<br />• Because a wearable device can actually handle two-thirds of what a smartphone can<br /><br /><strong>Why we don’t need wearables</strong><br /><br />• Added to the smartphone, they become just one more thing to handle<br />• Good-looking and cool just isn’t enough Companies should work on engaging consumers<br />• Wearables need too many changes in habits<br />• There are already too many wearables and they don’t talk to each other or to other devices<br />•Battery life is a problem that annoys users</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />So GoQii, the company that Gondal founded, decided to launch a fitness band. It measures all the usual parameters such as sleep and movement. The only difference being that it focuses on fitness. Gondal believes that 99 per cent of applications on wearables will have to do with fitness or productivity. The GoQii band is a simple piece of rubber that holds the core gadget. It has an OLED screen, which calls for minimal interaction. Its main job is to collect data as it sits on the wearer’s wrist and transmit it to an app on the phone or PC when connected.</div><div> </div><div>break-page-break</div><div> </div><div>From here on, an assigned coach steps in. Together, goals are set and through daily communication, feedback, suggestions and advice, the user is motivated to achieve his goals. Users pay for the expert coaching — Rs 5,999 for a six-month period and Rs 9,999 for a year. “Most companies launching wearables right now are hardware companies,” says Gondal. He adds that all of them just launch versions 1, 2 and 3 with more features and more bells and whistles. Adding services and not just features is what the business of these wearable devices seems to be all about.</div><div> </div><div><img width="526" height="400" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=9277bfad-7c5a-44b4-b438-e0fb505bc633&groupId=222861&t=1419427776928" alt="" /><br /><br />GoQii has the backing of some big names, including Google’s senior vice-president Amit Singhal, Flextronics CEO Mike McNamara, Seagate CEO Steve Luczo, WhatsApp business development head Neeraj Arora and Marco Argenti, vice president (mobile) at Amazon Web Services. Actress Madhuri Dixit Nene is also said to be an investor and her husband Shriram Nene is involved in his professional capacity. </div><div> </div><div>GoQii started in March with 1,000 beta testers, and has started shipping to consumers. The plan is to ramp up over the coming year, with launches planned in UAE, the US, the UK and Singapore. Sources say close to $2 million has been invested, but GoQii did not confirm the figure.</div><div> </div><div>If you visit Bangalore’s Cubbon Park at around 6 in the morning, you will find Mohammed H. Naseem, an IIT Bombay graduate, a former Infosys employee and one of the early builders of GE’s health business in India running with three colourful gadgets on him — a band on his wrist, one strapped to his shirt and the last, strapped to his shorts. His company GetActive has created these devices for individuals to track their sleep and measure the number of steps they take every day. The data syncs with an app. While the service can be commoditised, GetActive’s business model is unique.<br /> </div><div>“People do not like regimented physical activity. The key is to make physical activity social, interactive and fun,” says Naseem. Before he founded GetActive, his other startup 2Empower Health Management collected data on 2,500 customers and advised them on their daily activity, nutrition and created a road map to healthy living. </div><div> </div><div>“The data allowed me to understand that people like to be motivated in groups and need to be connected to achieve goals,” he adds. In 2013, Naseem and his team started GetActive with a small device, and now they are creating a platform for consumers, hospitals, medical practitioners and insurance companies. The device generates data on activity and sleep and makes it social on the app.</div><div> </div><div><a href="/image/image_gallery?uuid=1c221b7c-8041-48fc-b98c-471b042fb9b1&groupId=222861&t=1419427850925" target="_blank"><img width="640" height="210" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=d3e5e359-4c87-411b-a1b5-3b7387f72164&groupId=222861&t=1419427830374" alt="" /></a>GetActive’s team is approaching the corporate world to adopt its wrist bands to engage employees better. It wants large companies to use data generated by the device to make employees efficient and motivate them to create a work-life balance. The data gets collected on the GetActive cloud and is uniquely serviced for each client. Currently, a large health insurance company in India has sent GetActive’s product for approval to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. Once approved, the insurance company will be able to give this gadget to those insured and begin tracking their daily life. The gadget, GetActive Tapp, which was launched this year, is retailing at Rs 3,000. Naseem has the backing of a few high net worth individuals. One of them being a member of promoter family behind the Manipal hospital and education chain. Sources say $1 million has been invested in the company.</div><div> </div><div>The whole purpose is to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle; in turn, they will be rewarded with discounted premiums by insurers. Naysayers say people can always latch the device onto a pet dog and get a higher number of steps tracked. But they are forgetting something here. The sensors don’t just track movement, they measure your ECG, which is unique to an individual. </div><div> </div><div>break-page-break</div><div> </div><div>The data analytics teams can capture these trends and alert the hospital or insurance company if the device is misused. Obviously, the investment in data tracking will be high. “A wearable business is only sustainable if the makers create IP in software and services. If they do not, the Chinese hardware manufacturers will figure it out and standardise the software for large device manufacturers,” says Ivaturi Vijaya Kumar, chief technology officer and co-founder of Crayon Data.</div><div> </div><div>Creating specific software and services is what two entrepreneurs from Hyderabad are doing. Anirudh Sharma and Krispian Lawrence, two engineers from MIT, came to India in 2010 to work on haptic technology, which recreates the sense of touch by applying forces or vibrations to the device. They met in Hyderabad through a common friend, who was visually impaired and was looking for devices that could help him walk. Together the duo created a GPS-enabled smart sports shoe that vibrates to give the wearer directions. They launched the product, which combines haptic sensors to pick up data from a low-energy Bluetooth network to sync with the phone, under their company Ducere Technologies. </div><div> </div><div>Now, four years later, they have a 50-member team which has created a shoe that not only measures movement, but navigates and tracks fitness and can also understand gestures. The company is making products — available for $150 — on pre-order.</div><div> </div><div>“To unleash creativity, we have opened up our platform to developers; they can build apps around our haptic products,” says Lawrence. He adds that the company is going to make several products that can use gestures and movements to communicate with the environment around them. </div><div> </div><div>A contract for 100,000 shoes per annum has been signed with a manufacturer in China, and Ducere will start selling the product globally in 2015. The company has so far raised $2 million from high net worth individuals, and is in the process of raising a series-A round of funding. </div><div> </div><div><strong>The Big Names</strong></div><div>Nike was the first to start the wearable technology business with its Fuel Band, which tracked fitness when connected to a smartphone. However, the company is moving away from the wearables business. Nike, which has 30 million registered users for its fitness tracking programme, is going to focus on apps and services instead. Puma India has more than 150,000 users of its PumaTrac app and believes wearables make sense when there are services added to the ecosystem. “We think the shoes themselves can be connected through different modules and apps; there are several lifestyle services that can be added on top of the technology,” says a source from Puma India. </div><div> </div><div><img width="295" height="380" align="right" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=a4f40325-5fe5-4043-a58a-1a9a93e4b761&groupId=222861&t=1419427930910" alt="" />Another company that believes it is the service and not the device that makes wearables is Dubai-based Tupelo, which describes itself as a comprehensive-activity and empowered-wellness platform. It tracks personal telemetry and vital health statistics through integrated wireless device technology on wearables. Tupelo has just launched its wearable device Mymo in India. It’s a wireless activity tracker that measures steps, calories burned and distance travelled.<br /> </div><div>Mymo is a tiny clip-on device that can be clipped on to your shirt, jacket or belt loop. It connects to Android and iOS devices, and transfers data wirelessly. It has a 35-day memory backup and 6-month battery life. Tupelo’s CEO Martyn Molnar is quite clear that “cool tech” has a short life. While one charismatic device will replace another in the blink of an eye, the real value lies in the usefulness of the device. Molnar whips out the Mymo he’s wearing to show us how instead of being worn on the wrist, the little gadget is free from the noise of excessive movement when it’s placed next to your heart, increasing its accuracy. Tupelo chose India as a market because India is not only expected to closely follow global trends but witness great growth. The appetite for consumer electronics in the country is huge, with wearable technology leading the trend.</div><div> </div><div>According to the company, given the link between wearables and smartphones, a potential 20 per cent of the mobile user subscriber base could be adopters of wearable technology in the years ahead, provided devices are affordable and deliver value to the user community. Going by this estimate, there would be 200 million users by 2020. </div><div> </div><div>Molnar believes the market for devices is maturing very quickly with tech-savvy Indians looking for high levels of functionality, long battery life and interoperability delivered within an accessible price point. “We see the Indian market moving very quickly from device consumption to being engagement and services driven, expanding briskly and well beyond the scope of all incumbent devices in the market today,” says Molnar. Tupelo’s primary distribution will be via e-commerce partners. As for the B2C rollout, it will partner with healthcare providers such as gyms, nutritional experts, hospitals and insurance providers. </div><div> </div><div><img width="640" height="348" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=572a8385-a96b-4268-b189-00b1ade7297b&groupId=222861&t=1419427936433" alt="" /><br /><br />There is great potential for wearable technology as IDC, a research firm, predicts that India will have more than 80 million smartphones by the end of 2014. Each of these smartphones can connect with these wearable gadgets and offer a data analytics play in home automation, lifestyle, health, employee relationship and security. </div><div> </div><div>“All this data, which is residing in the cloud, will need to be protected because hackers can use personal information to sell or blackmail people,” says Tarun Kaura, director–Technology Sales for India at Symantec. </div><div> </div><div>break-page-break</div><div> </div><div><strong>Smart Stuff For Smart Cities</strong></div><div>People living in metros may well be blase about smartphones, but those in tier-II and -III cities, especially between 18 and 30 years, are starved of technology, believes T.M. Ramakrishnan, CEO (Devices), Spice Retail. “They know everything about technology,” he says, “but they want the right product at the right price. And that includes a smart watch.” In a survey intended to gauge the potential of the market, Spice, with an external agency, found that the company’s target customers were looking for a replica of their phones to be worn on the wrist. “There are enough times when they don’t want to carry their phones,” says Ramakrishnan. He adds that they want a watch that can take on some of the functions of their Android phones, especially when they go out, say, for an evening of entertainment.</div><div> </div><div>With the belief that the Indian market is more than ready for functional wearables at the right price, Spice recently launched a smart watch for the masses. Produced at low cost in China, the Smart Pulse M-9010 can be picked up for as low as Rs 3,000 (though it was launched for Rs 3,999) in some places. The Smart Pulse is not just a tiny phone on your wrist, it even boast of a dual SIM capability. It does not run on the Android OS, but can be paired with an Android phone and has more than just phone functions. Music control, camera, GPS, expandable memory, FM radio and a 420mAh battery are among its other features. That’s a lot to pack into a 1.5-inch screen. </div><div> </div><div>You can change wrist bands and use the Bluetooth headset if you are squeamish about holding up your hand to your face to make a phone call. In essence, the Smart Pulse is a second screen for the phone.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Exploring Use Cases</strong></div><div>If you have had enough of fitness and lifestyle, here is something that you would like to pay for if you are a parent. Schools in India are beginning to adopt wearable devices to track children, between the ages of 5 and 12, for their security. Bobbie Kalra and Shyam Ramamurthy have signed up over 100 schools to help them track their students with their technology. NorthStar, a startup incubated out of IT services firm MagnaSoft, has built the entire technology stack around a wearable. The device itself is commoditised, but the tracking services, intelligent camera and on-board diagnostics of school buses, integrated onto an app for parents and schools to view, have become a big business. <br /> </div><div>The government of Abu Dhabi has hired the company to track its 7,000 buses and over 50,000 students. The product is strapped to the belt loops of students before they board the buses. The device communicates with a Bluetooth reader in the bus and a route map opens up on the school app for the parent. Parents receive vehicle information and route updates till their kids enter school. “The business was born out of need. Cities are growing and crime is real, so child safety is of paramount importance as children do travel long distances to get to school in the country,” says Kalra, co-founder of NorthStar. The business model is built around charging the school an annual amount for its services, while parents pay Rs 75 a month per student to the school for these data services.</div><div> </div><div>Similar is the story of 23 year-old Arvind Sanjeev of ARS Technologies in Kochi, who created Smart Cap. The cap works on Raspberry Pi Foundation’s hardware, a credit-card sized computer laden with Broadcom’s system on a chip and ARM’s processor, and allows developers to integrate open source software and build applications on top of the hardware. The smart cap, also embedded with voice-based modules, allows one to search for information on a mounted screen with an inbuilt Internet connection. The screen also becomes a night vision camera. The product is yet to be commercialised; it is undergoing various iterations. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Travelling With Wearables</strong></div><div>The possible applications of a wearable are endless. SITA Lab, the strategic technology research arm of SITA (a specialist in air transport communications) can’t wait for wearables to become commonplace at airports and take flight with airliners. Even though Google Glass has been in existence for over a year now, it’s far from being available to everyone and is, of course, very expensive. Smart watches are launched every few weeks, but they aren’t mass market. It’s early days, but Stephane Cheikh, innovations manager at SITA Lab, thinks that it won’t be long before wearables will fulfil their potential in the aviation industry.</div><div> </div><div>Some day, every passenger who walks into an airport will wear one or more devices, but until then, wearables are being tried out by airport staff. “We find that staff can really put wearables to good use at the right time and place,” says Cheikh. “One of the first things we did was to develop an application for wearables to quickly scan boarding passes to increase the throughput for boarding.”</div><div> </div><div>SITA Lab is trying out Vuzix M100 smart glasses, an Android-based device with features designed for commercial use. The end use scenario that SITA has been working on is unique. A gate agent wearing this mobile computing device stationed at the aerobridge can scan passengers’ passports in one glance, making the boarding process faster. If there’s a match between the two — the passport and the scanner — a green light will blink on the display and the boarding will proceed. </div><div>Remember, these small 30-40-cm-long wearables need processors and chipsets that compute faster and consume less energy. But more the microcontrollers you add, the costlier and heavier the wearable becomes. So, the challenge today is making the chipset cheaper and lighter. Tracking sleep and movement does not require much, but when you add something that can recognise actions, or sensors that track heartbeat and blood sugar, battery consumption goes up. This is where the chipmakers are making inroads. All part of a revolution called the Internet of Things. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Chips Matter</strong></div><div>The chipset ecosystem is gearing up with its own take on wearable technology. Makers are coming up processors that can compute faster and consume less electricity. System on a chip (SoC) and core manufacturers are creating community boards for engineers where they can access single-board computers for a lower price and use forums to debate and develop applications for wearables. Broadcom’s Raspberry Pi, Texas Instruments’ BeagleBone,open platform Udoo – supported by Freescale, Intel’s MinnowBoard, Taiwan’s open source community Banana Pi and another open source community HummingBoard are changing the way engineers are building applications to connect devices. The challenge is many of them are yet to introduce boards for wearables, plus they are working on pilots that are not yet commercial. Broadcom, for instance, launched a smart SoC for wearables, where a single chip has a radio frequency and Bluetooth stack. “We believe that wearable technology needs standards from various industry verticals coming together and the field is wide open for large and small companies alike,” says Rajiv Kapur, managing director of Broadcom India. Like Broadcom, Freescale has launched Wearable Reference Platform, Qualcomm has Toq and Intel has Atom. There is an Indian startup too called Ineda Systems, which has built its own SoC and core for a wearable processing unit. The company claims to be the first to have a ready reference design for wearable technology. It is backed by big semiconductor names in the world like Imagination, Qualcomm Venture, Samsung Catalyst and Walden International. </div><div> </div><div><em>The authors are Vishal Krishna & Mala Bhargava</em></div><div> </div><div>(This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 12-01-2015)</div>