Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In those situations, they are the tier one system integrator and you come in as a tier two or tier three.

Jay Chandan: I’m happy being tier two. I wouldn’t call myself tier three today.

Sramana Mitra: Your genesis is Taiwan. Where are you getting the traction? Is it more in Southeast Asia?

Jay Chandan: Yes, and beyond Southeast Asia. I also focus on global economics. I started looking at post-COVID, pre-war conditions. We started looking at where the governments were looking to flex their muscles and invest in infrastructure. Where infrastructure goes, technology goes hand in hand as an investment. We identified some key regions – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, the Middle East, North Africa, and the United Kingdom.

All these have started flexing their muscles and investing in infrastructure. When we look at these markets and we started speaking to some key members of the government agencies, we realized that there was a much bigger play for us. That has brought us success today.

In every single market, we’ve found success. We’re going to stick to these markets today because these markets will become big. We are not seeing significant competition here today. Some of the players are still stuck in the US and Europe. We are going into emerging markets.

Sramana Mitra: You are in conversations with a lot of government buyers who are thinking about smart cities in the age of AI. AI has entered the mainstream conversation. For our audience, can you pinpoint some open problems where buyers are looking for a solution, but you haven’t yet seen a solution?

Jay Chandan: Sure. One of the most important things that I’m seeing today is cybersecurity. We talked about security convergence. The biggest issue I have seen to date is the assessment of breaches and threats across environments and the protection of IoT. Customers always want me to help them with building a better digital and operational footprint, but when I look at the customer’s pain points, they seem to be very lax on IoT security.

I don’t see many players in that space. We are investing quite heavily in there. We are productizing a number of our solutions today, but I’ve also seen that regulatory compliance seems to be a big issue as well. I can build as much as I want to, but if I fail to comply with the regulatory compliance, that can result in my product failing.

I always tell entrepreneurs to look at the customer’s real pain point. Understand what it is. Do not just build a product because it’s sexy. In the long run, you will lose sight of your market and the customer’s priorities. Cybersecurity is the most important element for all my customers today. Coupled with that, they’re also asking us to focus on regulatory compliance.

Sramana Mitra: We’ve already seen a few companies in cybersecurity vis-à-vis IoT and smart cities. Double-click down on the regulatory aspect of it. Give me an example of what you mean by cybersecurity with the regulatory compliance requirements.

Jay Chandan: Building management. I’m working with these companies in Thailand. They’re looking for footfall analysis, facial recognition, or behavior analysis. Customers are coming to me and saying, “How are you going to protect my data which is being generated across all these devices?” Obviously, we do have some products, but we don’t cover the entire spectrum. When I say smart buildings, I’m also talking about even measuring the amount of coffee you drink today.

Sramana Mitra: The use cases around data privacy, yes?

Jay Chandan: Yes. When I talk about GDPR or any regulatory, there is no one-stop shop today. I cannot go to a customer and say, “I am able to comply to certain regulatory requirements today.” That becomes a problem for the customers, because he doesn’t understand how, what, and when.

We are thinking working very closely internally to build our own regulatory ethical compliance body. It’s a Gorilla stamp of approval. That will take a couple of years. We’re building that today to make sure that companies are going to be compliant. There is some level of ethical coverage around it.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Smart City Use Cases and Opportunities: Jay Chandan, CEO of Gorilla Technology
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