Riding on Alexa, Hero Electronix wants to take its connected devices to a million homes

• Hero Electronix, a Hero Group company, has launched Alex-integrated Qubo smart indoor camera and three home sensors.
• In an interview with Business Insider, Ujjwal Munjal said that the ongoing economic slowdown is not going to affect their business.
• Munjal plans to invest ₹150-₹200 crore in the next one-and-a-half years in connected devices.

Hero Electronix, a subsidiary of the Hero Group, launched connected smart devices for homes. Led by Ujjwal Munjal, the grandson of Hero Group’s founder Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the company launched four products, leading with an Alex integrated device Qubo smart indoor camera and three sensors.

Hero Electronix has also partnered with Amazon and Qualcomm to launch Qubo. So far, ₹350 crore was invested. now, Munjal plans to invest ₹150-₹200 crore in the next one-and-a-half years.

Qubo is priced at ₹13,490 a piece. In the next year, they will also launch a video doorbell, multi-purpose indoor outdoor security cameras, all of which will be driven by AI and analytics.

“The idea is to innovate and build new products. We want to look at areas where we can add a meaningful impact on people's lives, not with products that are already there. We want to solve real world problems with a device that seamlessly fits into your home,” Munjal told Business Insider.

It took the company two years to build these products, but it took time to be a ‘Made in India’ product.

“Sixty engineers worked on the product for two years. And while building an Artificial Intelligence-driven product was not the tough part, the difficult process was building the hardware as India is not a hardware-led product. It took us 12 months to just build the prototype,” Nikhil Rajpal, CEO, Hero Electronix told Business Insider.

These products were also built to ensure consumer’s privacy. “Most of the cameras available in the market today are not data encrypted which makes them easy to hack. We built the product hardware ourselves, with a 128-bit encryption, that meant we needed to have a more expensive chip but the platform and cloud is based in India itself,” he said.

The launch comes at a time when India is in the midst of an economic slowdown, where every sector from auto to FMCG have been hit. However, Munjal is not worried.

“I’m not concerned about the slowdown for us in this business. We are trying to build a new product category, for us it;s anyway going to be a slow process. This will give us time to learn and educate people about the possibilities of home automation,” said Munjal.

Munjal has plans to reach a million homes in the next 3-5 years.