American conglomerate United Technologies has entered into a strategic tie up with Hyderabad-based startup engine T-Hub to launch an advanced emerging technologies laboratory at the T-Hub building in Hyderabad.
This is part of UTC’s bet on the smart city mission in India. United Technologies - Hyderabad Research and Design Center (HRDC)’s will use this space as a launch pad for its engineers to design and develop innovative solutions leveraging the start-up ecosystem.
UTC will also use this lab to showcase its Building products and platforms so that start-ups get an opportunity to develop collaborative solutions with the company.
“As a start-up engine, we are constantly focused on collaborating with global industry leaders, so that start-ups supported by us can benefit from their technical and technological expertise. Data analytics software and hardware is a game-changing segment for India, where we are witnessing high entrepreneurial interest,” Jay Krishnan, CEO, T-Hub said in a statement.
Innovation is of huge importance to UTC, says John Galbraith, Vice President of Global Engineering; Climate, Controls and Security at UTC. And the company recognises that all innovations cannot be done internally.
As a result, UTC is collaborating with startup engines and incubation centres across the globe to leverage the innovation done by startups and explore collaborations for solutions that fit its products.
The lab in T-hub will also allow startups to integrate their solution with UTC and help its own engineers to work out of this lab to develop innovative products.
“The launch of this laboratory reiterates our commitment to India and our continued focus on innovation. This initiative marks our contribution to the fast growing open innovation and start-up research explosion happening in India, specifically Hyderabad. UTC has its largest Research & Design centre for Commercial Businesses at Hyderabad (HRDC) and this launch will enable us to rapidly leverage innovative solutions for the benefit of our customers,” John Added.
T-Hub and UTC-HRDC have been engaged over the several months to promote innovation in the smart and intelligent buildings technology space. The most recent collaborative effort being the Smart City/Smart Building NanoAccelerator Video Analytics Challenge.
The challenge, which opened for startups in the video analytics space two months ago, saw nearly 40 applicants from across the globe including countries like Poland and Israel. The cohort, which will begin in 2-4 weeks is looking for startups developing a seamless video solution that will include video intelligence at the camera (edge), video intelligence shared by a ‘local mesh’ of cameras with minimal human intervention.
UTC’s Climate Controls and Security and Otis divisions will work closely with the shortlisted startups. UTC ‘s focus is very niche – it is looking for startups with differentiable, scalable software, which runs on low cost general purpose hardware and provides seamless actionable intelligence data with minimal human intervention.
The idea of the program is for UTC to enhance its integrated platform with a reliable and efficient video analytics software and embedded intelligence, through open innovation frameworks.
The selected startup will get to work and scale up under the aegis of UTC. The top 5-6 shortlisted startups will be able to develop a proof of concept (POC) and showcase it to key executives of UTC during the ‘Demo Day’ at T-Hub. Up to two POCs will receive a funding of a maximum of $25,000.
As part of the strategic collaboration, UTC-HRDC will work with T-Hub on more such programs to develop innovate solutions in the areas that UTC works in.
United Technologies Corporation a business conglomerate based in Farmington, Connecticut, that develops and manufactures technology products and services to the building and aerospace industries. It is well known for its brand of elevators, Otis and its ‘Carrier’ brand of air conditioners.
This article has been produced with inputs from T-Hub as a part of a partner program.