Dreaming Big For RFID

N-Net Technologies, a startup based in Bangalore, is working on significant innovations in radio frequency identification (RFID). We paid them a visit.

"Radio frequency identification is the technology for the future"says Mihir Mohan. One of the early adopters of RFID technology in India, N-Net Technologies has been providing products and solutions supplemented by education and training services in RFID. Though the company was officially incorporated in March 2005, Mihir Mohan and his team had already been working together for a year. They feel that RFID is at a transition stage in the country and will soon move from 'early adoption' to 'mass adoption'. Their ideas may well play a major role in speeding up the adoption of RFID in India.

In the beginning...

The foundation for N-Net Technologies was laid when Mihir Mohan and Veerendra Shivahre were working with BEA Systems and got a chance to work on a few RFID projects. "At that time, we got the initial idea of doing something in RFID. But that was too early," remembers Shivahre, director, R&D at N-Net. However, after doing intense research on the technology and its business perspective, they decided to try their hand at the software infrastructure side of RFID. They left BEA Systems, and together with a team of young professionals, started N-Net Technologies.

They realised that they were taking a major risk by entering an entirely new technology realm, in which not much was happening, at least in India. But the technology was very fascinating and they wanted to work on it. Then there was the urge to do something special even while working independently. "The major motivation of the people of our age group is that they want to go to the US, work there for some clients and earn dollars. I have met a few people from my batch who have worked with some companies just to go to the US. I wanted to avoid that. I decided to try something very challenging. I think we were at the right age to take risks since we weren't burdened by too many liabilities," says Mohan.

That said, their new company got off to a slow start. "When we started, we were working on a very new technology that had not picked up at that time. It was really nascent in India and because of that we did not get many projects here. But we did manage to get some projects from countries like Saudi Arabia that had started experimenting with new applications of the technology," remembers Mohan. "The first three months were spent on more research about RFID and its market in India and the US. We then slowly increased the size of our team and developed our first product."

Expanding the product portfolio

Today, the company has a wider portfolio of products. Their flagship product is the Neo RF Development Platform, an easyto- use toolkit, which empowers software developers to rapidly design, develop and test RFID applications. Developers can build device-independent applications using common APIs and can use a simulated environment to prototype an application. Developed using open source technologies, the toolkit also supports a number of devices. It can collect data from different devices and through different media like active RFID, barcodes, GPS, etc. There is an enterprise version of this product called the Neo Track and Trace Platform, targeted at the retail and manufacturing industry for tracking the movement of goods as they move from the manufacturer to the retailer.

N-Net also provides solutions. One of these is Prolib, a library management solution that can be used by any home user or installed in professional libraries. Designed to enhance the service quality of the traditional library systems by leveraging the capabilities of RFID technology, it comes with Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) support and voice based help, as well as a messaging system between the administrator and the librarian. N-Net has also developed a solution for vehicle tracking called VehiTrack. It enables real-time tracking of the vehicles inside parking lots and service centres, allowing customers to know the exact location of a car at any point, the time of parking, etc.

Mohan claims that N-Net is the only company in India working in UHF RFID. "Right now, most of the small RFID companies work in library management or swipe card-based systems. We are the only one in the UHF area," he says. NNet is a member of EPCglobal (the industry-driven standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) to support the use of RFID) and is involved in prototyping and testing one of the standards, which is to be released in the near future.

The company also provides educational services through RFID Voice-its channel through which N-Net offers training and education services to companies or individuals who want to implement RFID to improve operational efficiency and the effectiveness of their supply chain. It also conducts online, onsite and classroom courses. "Our strategy is to educate, experiment and execute. While a few countries are in the process of experiment and execution, India is still in the stage of education. So we felt a need to make people aware of RFID and then lead them to the experiment stage," says Mohan.

Driven by teamwork and a vision

One of the reasons for N-Net's innovations is its relatively young team. Most of the members in the company's development team are from the IITs with specialised domain experience. "We started in a small apartment, and today have got a good office with lab facilities. But the biggest achievement is our team that is totally dedicated to its work. That is what we look for in people-passion and patience. But we have not hired employees - that's something we will never do. We have built a team of partners who share the same vision or at least the same passion as us," explains Mohan, who has no plans of building a large team-he thinks that 25 people are enough if they have the qualities he is looking for.

Mohan and his team hope that the future will see the retail sector in India adopting RFID on a wider scale. "The retail movement in India will drive RFID adoption. Jewellery shops in Mumbai and the retail industry in Hyderabad are already adopting this technology," says Shivahre.

Once it gets more projects, N-Net plans to come up with a lot more new applications of the technology. "We want to enable new networks based on RFID and other related technologies like GPS and GSM. We are talking to big companies to get some projects for GSM and GPS," Mohan says."We want to survive and get more experience in RFID. Hopefully, we will then be in a position to roll out more products."

Looking to the future with hope

N-Net today provides tools for RFID, but plans to move into applications and then to the business intelligence space in the coming years. The company currently has two clients and is also taking up consultancy projects.

"As the technology is still in its evolving stage, we are not getting many projects. That has been one of the hindering factors for us," admits Mohan. "When we started the company, there were around eight companies in India that were trying to come into RFID. Today, there are only three or four. As there were no major projects in RFID, most of them moved to a different business. We also had to take some different steps to survive and did a few service projects. But we are definitely growing now-the last year has seen a huge difference in our business."

He and his team remain confident about the future. "Look at the USA. In 2003, RFID was a lesser-known technology in that country. But now everybody is talking about it. We believe the technology has a great future. After a few years, we hope to see big FMCG companies adopting this technology," says Mohan.

The high cost of the software and hardware required for the deployment of RFID is one of the factors delaying the fast adoption of this technology. But prices are coming down gradually and more people are becoming aware of the advantages of RFID. "I think the adoption of RFID in India is going to be similar to that of the mobile phone. As the technology matures, hardware and software costs will decrease, making it easier to adopt," says a confident Shivahre.

All set for innovation

Notwithstanding the achievements of his relatively young company, Mohan is far from happy about the static attitudes of people in India. "The time has come for India to come up with more innovations in new areas. We just follow countries like the US and then claim to be an IT superpower. The Indian IT user market is developing but we are not actually coming up with inventions."

The coming years might see Mohan and his team change that.