Interview: Committed to Continuous Improvement

Head quartered in Dubai, UAE with regional branches in the major cities of India, and presence in Africa, Omnitec Group has been providing the latest technology for parking, security and automation for over two decades. Entrusted with the great responsibility of expanding and carrying forward the Group business and its ideology, Renwil Menezes, DGM, Business Development understands that servicing the customers is equally important like delivering the best products.

Being a leading provider of world class Parking Management tools, what do you consider are the recent parking technology innovations that are impacting the parking sector?

We are living in an era where the number of vehicles is increasing at an exponential rate and hence it is very significant to have all the parking vicinity be as technologically advanced as possible. This need of the hour has led to various groundbreaking innovations and developments in the parking sector. One such development is our latest video analytics and AI-based parking guidance system, which is designed to lead the users to the nearest parking lot in multilevel or underground parking premises. The system is so advanced that it detects the number plate details from each parking slot and it allows the users to search for the vehicle in a Kiosk or a mobile app as soon as their visit is fulfilled. Video analytics enables unlimited enhancement opportunities when compared to the traditional ultrasonic-based parking guidance system. Moreover, Omnitec believes in the organisation’s Corporate Social responsibility and we make sure it is part of our design intent. The Video Analytics based parking guidance system helps to reduce the carbon footprint by avoiding the drivers from driving in vain to look for a space. All our products carry the footprints of our CSR values.

How has Omnitec grown over the years? When put to manage a parking company, what have been your vision?

Our Visionary Founder has laid the stone for Omnitec with a vision of providing technologically advanced solutions to any sophisticated parking management complexities. The vision of Omnitec has always been the continuous improvement of what we have delivered yesterday and to thrive as the world’s most preferred parking solutions company. We believe in leading the industry and creating solutions that will act as a benchmark for the rest of the industry to follow. These core principles have helped us to expand ourselves to over 30+ countries with hundreds of happy clients and thousands of users widespread over the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and African Continent.

How different is the Indian market compared to UAE and other markets you are catering to?

The UAE market has been open to superior parking technologies for the last two decades and the authorities in the UAE have been very instrumental in integrating the infrastructure with the parking solutions. For instance, all the vehicle number plates in UAE are already standardized decades ago, and hence it is easy for solutions providers like Omnitec to effectively roll out technologies that are based on number plate detection. We have installed our first ever parking guidance system in a mall in UAE approximately 15 years ago and it is also the first-ever parking guidance system to be installed anywhere in the middle east by any company.

The Indian market has been very open to parking solutions for the last few years and it is growing at a rapid pace. We observe a swift turnaround in Infrastructure development and standardization in India and it is very visible in the projects that we are catering to. The scale of these projects is big and designed with the latest technologies available.

Special features of recent big projects…

We are currently executing two huge projects in India; one is Chennai International Airport and the other in Lulu Lucknow. Chennai International Airport will arguably be the biggest automated parking facility in India with fully automated parking machines once it is fully commissioned. The Lulu mall, Lucknow is one of its kind and will be having one of the biggest parking facilities which
uses advanced parking technologies in India.

In smart cities, off road and & road parking form a main component. And also the pandemic has changed the operational aspects of parking facilities…

The pandemic has changed people’s perspective on Smart Parking. For example, the public has been showing a problem in pressing any button for dispensing a parking ticket as they fear possible virus transmission from the ticket buttons. Our market research team has observed this behavior within the first few weeks of the pandemic and the observation has led to the development of our ticketless parking management system. We have also provided a feature called “touchless mode” to our existing installations where a pinhole camera is added to the ticket machines and it can detect the gestures and vehicle type to dispense a parking ticket.

How do you want to expand in India? Which are the main segments you focus on?

 We have developed a very detailed road map for our next 10 years of expansion in India which includes a production facility in India and a regional HQ in Bangalore in addition to our Gurgaon Head Office. We have already kick-started our action plan by adding a regional HQ in Bangalore and we are on the way to announcing our production facility in India under made in India brand.