The growing fondness for smart cards in the Indian industry has upped the business opportunities for companies like Zebra Technologies. Ajay Rao, Head of Cards Business & Pre-Sales, India and subcontinent, Zebra Technologies talk about company’s plans and targets
How big is the smart card and barcode market?
India is emerging as one of the world’s largest and fastest growing markets for smart cards. The market size is anticipated to reach $1 billion by 2015. A huge component of the growth is expected to come from the on-going government projects like the RSBY, PDS, driving license , vehicle registration, financial inclusion, toll collection, metro rail projects etc.
How conducive is the market for smart cards and biometric business, currently?
Smart cards are gaining swift popularity in various segments of the industry. The basic reason behind their popularity is ‘transaction tracking’, which has become the need of the hour.
With a population of over 1.2 billion, government has put in a lot of beneficiary and regulatory programmes that demand the need of smart cards. Card personalisation being a key component of the industry, we have seen a continued increase in demands for our range of products and solutions. We find the industry pretty open and inclined to use the best of the technologies available.
Apart from this, there are several other sectors which have great potential. These include schools and colleges for student IDs and registration, staff IDs, library records, exam entries, network log-ins, club memberships, cashless campuses. Besides, retail outlets are increasingly adopting staff IDs, cash register log-ins, driver IDs, loyalty cards, accounts cards, gift cards, etc. The BFSI sector has also started adopting instant personalisation of customer cards, micro-banking, e-passbooks, etc.
Could you please name some of the projects you are involved in?
With a wide range of on-demand card printers, we have been an active component of the all solution domains, involving use of cards from driving licenses to bus pass, loyalty to insurance cards and school ID to hospitality cards.
Zebra card products are being used in various projects under central and various state government projects and initiatives. We have more than 11 states/UT’s using our printers for DL/RC applications including states of J&K, Chandigarh etc.
There is always a security issue attached with smart cards and biometrics, how do you approach the problem?
The technology being used by the government for smart cards is pretty advanced and has evolved well over the time. There are enough checks, procedures and systems in place with best possible security checkpoints.
We at Zebra understand the importance of the systems and have a secure range of smart card printers like ZXP Series 7 and Series 8 that can be used to compliment the security need by proving the best covert and overt industry leading security features, including secure Holographic lamination, on-demand UV printing, secure lock for individual printer, software lock feature and even AES encryption for the communication with the printers.
How is India an important market for Zebra?
India is a country of 1.2 billion people and identification and allocation of secure benefits, privileges are the need of the hour. Card projects are directly linked to citizens, hence the demand for cards, card related projects and usages are pretty enormous. With the government pushing for more and more automations and cash less transactions the need for on-demand card encoding and printing is set to grow at a very high pace.
Zebra being a leading solution provider in identification solutions has the right products for the market and with every launch is moving closer to the current growth and needs of the industry.
Can you please give us some future trends about the AIDC and RFID market?
The Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) market, in India and around the world, is fast emerging as an important contributor in helping organisations to manage their operational efficiencies effectively, thus giving a digital voice to assets, people and transactions that provides greater visibility into the mission-critical information.
AIDC vertical largely comprises of barcode and RFID printer manufacturers, ribbons and labels manufacturers and biometric and EAS (Enterprise Application Service) providers.
Customers in India have recognised the importance of tracking, which leads to various component of the AIDC vertical. This can be used as per the organisational goals to optimise their required process that gives digital voice to assets, people and transactions, thus providing greater visibility into mission-critical information.
At Zebra Technologies, we see a huge potential for this market in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, transport, logistics, etc., as well as the pharmaceutical space in India. For example, in the healthcare sector, the industry is realising the importance of accuracy, safety and efficiency for prescription processing. Zebra’s labelling solutions help address these issues.
Some industry studies indicate the current market for the AIDC industry to be around Rs.1–1.2 billion with a growth rate of around 35% every year.
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