The Hindu Business Line : Push comes from consumer

RFID or radio identification technology is being talked about as business transformational technology but if one were to track the applications developed using RFID, the consumer emerges the winner. While in the West, retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Germany's Metro Group are preparing to adopt the advanced supply chain management technology on a big scale, in the Indian context it will take a good eight-nine years for RFID to go mainstream.

However, some interesting projects have been reported, for instance the shop on Wipro's Bangalore campus that uses radio tags to automate purchases and the tracking of goods, or BPCL's retail automation efforts for which the petroleum major has tendered bids from vendors to supply the RFID-enabled solutions.

The Indian IT industry has also geared up to participate in the RFID movement with the likes of Infosys, Wipro, Patni Computers and TCS having dedicated RFID practices. And driving this RFID movement worldwide is an Indian, Dr Sanjay Sharma, often referred to as the Father of RFID. The US-headquartered OAT Systems Pvt Ltd, Dr Sharma's firm, works on the RFID product development side and India is poised to play a major role in this pioneering effort. As a part of this, a substantial part of the $11.5-million venture capital funds received by Oats is likely to be channelised to India for developing a full-fledged facility here.

Jasjit Mangat, Head of Consulting, Asia, Oat Systems Pvt Ltd, is very optimistic on RFID's potential to bring about sweeping changes in India. "Imagine if I were not able to get access to a Gilette razor due to the supermarket not having stocked up, and all this because the razor was not RFID-tagged. All I would end up having is a three-day old stubble, but if an Indian jawan is not able to get access to instant food because there was no inventory, one can just imagine the consequences," explains Mangat by way of illustrating the application areas for RFID. "RFID will be a business transformational technology in India and even though its adoption has been low key, I suspect that going ahead this will change and something akin to the Internet revolution can be expected. See, for the telephone density to be what it is in India, it took a decade, and in comparison, Internet penetration hardly took a few years. The latter will recur for RFID adoption in India," says Mangat.

But pose a query: Is India a mere blip on the company's growth map and a resounding `No' is the quick response. For Oats to set shop in India, one of the key drivers has been customer demand since the supply chain component of most of the company's clients in the US is from the Asia-Pacific region. While the firm's Boston centre takes care of the requirements of the US, the Indian development facility is expected to be a counterpoint for Oats worldwide and manage the Asia-Pacific and European clients.

Currently the 20-member team located at Hyderabad is working on development of software for RFID adopters and shortly the team will be ramped up. By year-end, next year, the Head of Consulting envisages the Indian centre to fully execute the product development of the company's flagship product, Foundation Suite, as also other RFID application development here. For this, Mangat plans to source experienced product architects from the US since "there is a shortfall of skilled product architects here. Of course we will scout the Indian IITs too and attract top-notch computer scientists who would like to work on interesting work in the RFID area," he says.

Some key challenges will, however, have to be addressed before application development can really go full stream. One recurring issue is the management of the huge amounts of data that are being churned out. "We need to develop applications that can manage the data, be it real-time data, high-resolution data and comprehensive data. And this is where large opportunities lie for companies working with RFID technology. Another aspect is that while it is possible for real-time data to be made available, in practice the time lag has not been bridged. For instance, in a SCM (supply chain management) scenario, a supplier in Shanghai might want to know every time his product is picked up in a Wal-Mart store. This is not practically possible with RFID. Perhaps we might see something on this soon," says Mangat.

Interestingly, Vietnam, China and Singapore are aggressively driving the RFID movement in the Asia-Pacific region. In India it will take a while even though the pharma, defence and retail sectors are warming up. For Oats, India has a strategic importance on the company's growth map, both as a market and a development centre. As of now, however, the Head of Consulting is busy drumming up awareness about the upcoming EPIC Conference in New Delhi on November 8 and 9 and the fact that Dr Sanjay Sharma is slated to make the keynote address here.

preetipandey@thehindu.co.in

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