Recently, we interacted with Mr. Nikhil Rajpal, Founder and CEO, Hero Electronix, which is the legendary Hero Group’s venture into the technology space with a vision to create leading technology businesses from India.
Here are the interview highlights:
Qubo is becoming synonymous with smart living in India. Could you please share the philosophy behind the brand’s mission to promote connected and smart living in Indian family setups?
At Qubo, we remain committed to making life better by reimagining products & experiences. We do this by leveraging the power of technology to develop products that remove unnecessary hassles & complexities from daily life. This is especially relevant today, as the world around us becomes increasingly connected, convenient & smart. So, why should our homes or automobiles feel any different. Imagine a home where you don’t need keys, don’t have to worry about the safety of your folks, can run all your appliances through your phone & even know the real-time location of your car at all times. With Qubo’s extensive portfolio of smart devices, such Smart Homes & Automobiles are a reality today.
Over the past 4 years, it’s been an incredible experience to witness the ever-growing adoption of smart devices across the country. Indian consumers with their ever-increasing appetite for a smarter lifestyle keep us energized to continually push the boundaries of innovation. As a result, we have a wide range of products today including Smart Door Locks, Video Door Bells, Smart Air Purifiers & much more on the home side along with a bunch of Auto Accessories such as Dashcams, GPS Trackers, Tyre Inflators that have made millions of homes, cars & bikes smarter & safer.
2. Given that Qubo operates across diverse categories of smart devices, how do you ensure seamless integration of these devices to provide a unified smart home experience?
Offering a seamlessly integrated experience across all our smart devices is one of the most distinctive features of Qubo. In fact, this forms the basis of our customer-first approach that helps us stay true to our mission stated earlier.
Our vision of the smart home was clear, even while we were starting out, where devices would work in a connected, harmonious manner. To deliver this the right way – we took the tough, but important stand of developing our own technology stack from the ground up. And not just depend on easily available 3rd party software / apps used by other brands. This proprietary, custom built tech stack featuring our own apps, software, cloud, AI etc. enables us to not only develop products specially designed for Indian consumers & use cases, but also ensures in delivering a seamlessly connected experience. Through the Qubo app, consumers can control & manage all their smart home devices including unlocking the door lock, monitoring the security camera feed, switching on smart bulbs & plugs and much more.
3. As you mentioned about Smart Plugs and Smart Bulbs, could you shed some light upon how do you envision Qubo’s contribution to the larger movement towards smart and sustainable homes in India?
Smart Homes aren’t just more convenient & safer but can be very sustainable as well. In fact, smart devices often help in conserving energy while delivering much better performance & user experience compared to their ordinary counterparts. Our Smart Plugs and Smart Bulbs are designed with a strong emphasis on energy efficiency. Consumers can easily monitor energy consumption levels by the appliances plugged-in to the Qubo Smart Plugs and can also customize the intensity or brightness to provide just the right amount of light at any given time by the Qubo Smart Bulbs. Such small actions often go a long way in conserving precious energy & promoting responsible usage. At a time when energy conservation is of paramount importance, our smart devices play a significant role in contributing to a sustainable future.
In essence, our contribution to the larger movement towards smart and sustainable homes in India is underpinned by our dedication to energy efficiency, resource conservation, and user-friendly smart home solutions. We believe that by making these technologies accessible, we can inspire a positive change in the way homes are managed and contribute to a sustainable future in India.
4. In an increasingly competitive smart devices market what is it that differentiates Qubo in terms of technology and AI? Can you highlight some of the specific innovations that have propelled the brand forward?
Our proprietary technology stack is Qubo’s biggest differentiator in delivering a best-in-class user experience. Spanning hardware, software, firmware etc. this comprehensive stack encompasses proprietary design elements, in-house AI models, our enterprise-grade cloud platform, and custom-designed apps. Doing all of this in-house at our state-of-the-art Qubo Innovation Center delivers an unparalleled advantage in terms of designing products with Indian use cases in mind & rolling out periodic upgrades to further enhance product performance.
Important to note here that all of this accomplished while following stringent data security practices to ensure privacy is never compromised. Case in point – all the data is stored in secured servers hosted in India that offers yet another competitive advantage over other players that often end up taking consumer data outside the country’s geographical boundaries.
Qubo’s continuous focus on innovation has resulted in deploying bunch of intelligent features across our products such as AI-based baby cry detection in our Baby Camera, QTouch & QSensAI in our Smart Door Locks & Smart Air Purifiers respectively and a lot more.
5. Could you elaborate on Qubo’s future direction in terms of ‘Make in India’ expansion plans and strengthening tech capabilities? What impact do you expect these aspects to have on Qubo’s products and services?
Since our inception we’ve been firmly committed to the Make in India initiative by manufacturing a majority of our products here in the country. This not only contributes to the nation’s self-reliance goals & generates employment, but also offers a great advantage in terms of faster speed in bringing the product to the market. When the world is increasingly looking at India for its manufacturing requirements, why should we look outside. And in terms of technology, we keep a track of all emerging technologies or evolving lifestyle changes to identify opportunities for further innovations that often results in new products as well as feature upgrades in existing products.
In the near future, consumers can expect smarter, more efficient, and feature-rich devices across newer categories. For instance – just in the last quarter, we’ve ventured into new categories such as GPS Trackers, Air Purifiers etc. So, we are definitely excited about bringing out newer innovations that continue to enrich lives.
