NEC Laboratories India (NLI), a part of the Japanese multinational NEC Corporation, is planning to expand operations beyond the focus areas of public transport and logistics to public safety, fintech, healthcare and education too.
“Our current focus is on public transportation and logistics… [keen on] expanding our scope to include other areas like safety, fintech, healthcare and education,” NLI Head Akihiko Iketani said in an interaction here on Friday.
A part of NEC Technologies India the laboratory in Mumbai, complemented by a team of data scientists in Bengaluru, follows an approach of community-based research and development activities, one that helped develop solutions for society. Beyond expanding into other areas, the emphasis is also on trying to deploy the solution developed in India in other emerging countries of South East Asia, Middle East and also Africa.
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Mr. Iketani, who is in the city for the hackathon focused on robotics that NEC is organising during the weekend, said NLI will also be increasing the headcount from 19 to 25 this year. The number will be doubled next year.
Customer solutions
He also did not rule out the possibility of NEC Technologies India setting up an office in Hyderabad. “That’s one of the reasons why we are holding this hackathon here,” he replied to query on whether the company would establish a facility in Hyderabad. Stating that the company would be exploring the option, he said a lot depends on the “what opportunities we have here… we work very closely with customers and partners.”
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Elaborating on the work undertaking by NLI, established in July 2018, he said the India lab is unique and sixth in the R&D network of NEC globally and sought the harness the power of AI and Big Data. “Other labs start developing certain technology [and] then they look for application and solution enabled by that and go for commercialisation. Whereas this lab in India works in other way round. Instead of starting with technology, we start by identifying social problems or customers’ operational problems [to be addressed] and think how we can solve. Only after that [we] start working on technology. That is why we call our lab, solution oriented lab instead of technologies.”
Hackathons, he added, were one way of identifying the problems and solutions. NEC Technologies India plans to conduct one hackathon a month in various cities of the country.