“HID as a company is innovating through its customer-centric and customer-focused products.”
Electronics Era: Briefly describe HID?
Vishal R Soni: HID is a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions. HID Global has been providing trusted technologies to the world’s people, places and things for over 3 decades. We offer convenient access to digital items and connect things which could be identified, verified and tracked digitally on a global platform. We work with governments, educational institutions, banking and financial institutions and industrial businesses all around the world.
Electronics Era: What Innovative offerings are displayed at Smart Card Expo 2022?
Vijay Kumar: At Smart Card Expo 2022, two of our business areas have been showcased, that are Secure Issuance and Identification Technology. Under the Identification Technologies we have displayed our contactless and scanning solutions which includes various UHF, LF & HF, RFID tags that can be used for a variety of Track and Trace applications. We also have sensor-based technologies, mainly catering to the IoT segments. Other displays include HID Textile Services Laundry and Linen Management solutions for the laundry and textile industry. In the logistics and the manufacturing field, we have tags and reader elements that we use to track package location and its volume in a particular region. It can also identify work in progress management across the manufacturing supply chain.
Vishal R Soni: Our R&D team has worked continuously to innovate new technologies used for identity and authentication. HID® FARGO® Inkjet Card Printer & Encoder is the next revolution in desktop card printing, bringing the simplicity and affordability of inkjet printing to personalized cards and IDs. Our aim is to provide premium high-quality printing, where we increase the convenience of the customer and at the same time give the best security. We can also remotely manage identity theft and document generation in a very convenient and quick way at the same time, keeping the security intact.
Electronics Era: Briefly explain some features of Secure Issuances & Identification Technology products that HID Global Offers?
Lee Wei Jin: With the many concerns about data security and data privacy HID® FARGO® Connect™ is a software solution that enables remote assurance over the cloud without compromising any data security and privacy. Major IT companies in the world are using this solution to issue their employee ID globally. Our solutions come with a wide range of features as well as functions. We have the world’s broadest portfolio of advanced generation ID card printers and encoders, it is an all-in-one solution for creating ID cards. Besides that, we have drop on demand technology which minimize any wastages. Unlike traditional technology for card printing, there is no wastages for drop on demand technology.
Electronics Era: Does HID provide some security to its customer for data, security or solution about it.
Lee Wei Jin: Yes, it is one of our key features across all product offerings. All data transfer between the PC to our printer is encrypted with the necessary compliance.
Vijay Kumar: For IDT, we’ve displayed a series of products – Active and Passive. The active products are typically labels and hard texts that you can print on. We can do personalization on the tags and these are meant to track people and assets on the movement. So, they could be as simple as peel and stick on a particular asset and move away or they could be attached to an asset. The other element is a range of IoT products again, both active and passive tags coming with a series of sensors that will monitor temperature, the condition of the assets, the movement of the asset from different places. The third element that we have displayed are the customization capabilities that we could have, that is localizing a product for the market which could include printing & encoding depending upon the custom menu.
Electronics Era: What are the new products which HID brings to the Indian market in bio-metric identification?
Vijay Kumar: The new products include Track & Trace, they enhance the features of the product, with value-added functionality, rather than mere tracking and tracing. These products come with a wide range of features such as both high and low-frequency bandwidth and also ultra-high frequency together with active bandwidth. So, there is a range of products that we have displayed here that cater to a global market.
Electronics Era: How do you imagine the future of the security Market in India?
Vijay Kumar: The security market in India is booming and businesses across verticals are beginning to adopt the latest security solutions. It is going to double its size in terms of revenue generation in the next 5 years. With digitization taking over all aspects in India, identity solutions providers like us will play a vital role in aiding this upward growth.
Vishal R Soni: HID as a company is innovating through its customer-centric and customer-focused products. We are trying to come up with new solutions that could increase transparency among each stakeholder, for example increase transparency within manufacturing, logistics and supply chain players. So, India is definitely poised for growth, many industries using traditional supply chains will sooner or later be forced to go digital and that is where we look at ourselves as technology providers who can enable this transformation.
Vijay Kumar: We are the second highest populated country in the world. So, identity becomes a very important aspect in order to touch upon each and every person in this particular part of the world. This in turn increases the demand for security and need for tracking. We believe we can play a critical and a responsible role in this aspect.
Electronics Era: According to you, which technology trends you’re expecting in 2023.
Vijay Kumar: The focus would all be on digitization. As our honourable Prime Minister had mentioned that cargo and goods have to move at higher speeds from one place to another; and so there is a huge demand for identification and tracking. We add another layer by adding sensors into our products that could not only do a simple track & trace, but also provide the condition of the items that are moving from one place to another. For example, if we would measure the temperature of a particular product, we would measure the moisture content, the humidity that it would be traveling in, etc. For a simple example, if it’s a health care product, we would try to give you information at the end of the day, whether it is suitable for the end user or whether it’s lapsed its purpose and so identification using digital technologies is what we are there for.
Vishal R Soni: India is running one of the most prominent ID card programs across the world, namely Aadhar and Ayushman Bharat. Both have been well accepted and recognized across the world as primary program making citizen identification efficient. It can be a Tax card; it can be an insurance card or it can be any other identity card where we need to verify a person’s identity as well as give him/her certain citizen facilities and benefits. We are bringing those kinds of solutions which are capable of doing it and helping the government in this mission
Electronics Era: What are HID future plans for India?
Vijay Kumar: From a technology perspective, the government of India is definitely one of our biggest verticals that we are trying to look at to drive business. Apart from that, we do support various missions that the Indian government has launched. We would also be looking at verticals such as transportation and logistics, railways, for example, the oil and gas segment is again a booming industry where there is a requirement to have less dependency on imports and rather trying to focus on exports from India. Healthcare is another potential avenue for us, there have been a lot of investments happening in healthcare under Ayushman Bharat. Linen and garments segment is another vertical that we will look at and on the private side, we also plan to look at management of IT, management of assets would also be a focus. We would also be looking at opportunities in manufacturing with respect to warehousing and inventory management.
Vishal R Soni: From a Secure Issuance perspective we need to identify the ID technology that the market needs. What do citizens need? A citizen needs to have secure as well as convenient transactions in every aspect of life. Either, it can be secure access to any banking system, to a particular digital device, or getting access to any secure organization, all these transactions need to be addressed with relevant secure issuance technologies with efficient service and technology providers who can help in mission-critical programs run by the government, and take digital India mission to the next level. I believe that physical and digital identity programs need to work simultaneously hence solutions that can seamlessly integrate both are going to be very important in the near future.
Electronics Era: Is there any new product that HID Global is going to launch in the near future?
Vishal R Soni: We have been working on various technologies for printing cards and smart cards to generate identities. We have come up with inkjet technology, and we have delivered a world-class Direct-to-Card Technology in the past as well as Retransfer Technologies. We are proud to say that we are also working on a laser technology which will be highly secure and provide a lot of convenience and premium quality cards; developing and generating new identities across the country. We have already developed these solutions in the last couple of years, especially post pandemic. During the pandemic, there was a down time and we used this down time to generate and develop new innovative products so that we will be ready for the needs of the customer and enhance their experience.
Lee Wei Jin: We listen to the market and plan to go deeper into the market. We are planning to invest more into the Indian market and bring new products in the near future in both Secure Issuance and Identification Technology. We would serve the market with the latest technologies.
Electronics Era: Which technology advancement or product makes HID Global unique and different from its competitors?
Vishal R Soni: We are invested in this market. Through our local warehouse we are able to provide employment, localize business and closely work with our local teams to innovate and better manage resources. This makes us unique from our competitors.
