Thiruvananthapuram, India: DES Mapping Solutions, a Singapore-based company, brought its cloud-based ‘data appliance’ product in India. It aims to help its clients develop and own carbon credits. Announcing this to an Indian daily, Ajith Menon, Chief Executive Officer, DES, said that the company has already opened an office in New Delhi.
Menon, whose venture has been funded by the Singapore Government, was in India to network with the Group of Technology Companies (GTECH) in Kerala.
Menon offered hand-holding facilities for companies, looking to set up business in the city-nation, a regional hub for IT, finance and banking business. He said that the ‘data appliance’ sits somewhere between the cloud and the normal server-based IT infrastructure on ground. “We seek to offer the best of both worlds at a fraction of the costs that the specific data (mainly satellite images) would otherwise cost,” he added.
The company also deals in satellite images and other base data used for city and infrastructure planning. It also finds traction as a finder of natural resources as in forests and mines. According to Menon, the per-sq km of data made available by US companies costs around USD 30. The whole of India is 2.1 million sq km, so it would cost USD 60 million, if a company wants to purchase the data outright. The company would also need to do a lot of customising job of the data through sizing of the hardware, buy software and develop applications. It will cost an additional USD 10-15 million.
Elaborating its business strategy, Menon explained, “We have a back-to-back link with the data supplier in the US. We put this data in our data appliance, the ‘black box’. The client cannot take out the data, but can use it for their application for an annual fee. Subscription cost for one year is USD 1 million. So the cost gets cut from USD 30 to just USD 1 per sq km. That’s the kind of costs benefit the client company is going to enjoy.”
Source: Business Line
