Not afraid of Apple: Indian start-ups are building AI-enabled smartwatches

Smartwatches account for about 12% of the wearables market in India, reports Tech in Asia

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to launch the smartwatch market into a high growth trajectory, says a report by Counterpoint Research.

It estimates the wearables market, dominated by fitness trackers like Fitbit, to grow 376 per cent annually in 2017 to reach 60 million units, on the back of artificial intelligence (AI). Smartwatches only account for about 12 per cent of the wearables market in India. This share is estimated to grow to grab 42 per cent share in 2017, helped by AI-backed smartwatches, Counterpoint Research states in the report.

Headway

It is India’s start-ups that are making the real breakthrough in AI-backed wearables. In January, local start-up Boltt released a fitness kit that includes a pair of smart shoes, a smart band, and health and training apps powered by AI.

It already has a competitor in the Sandfox smartwatch. The Sandfox founders are so confident about the AI capability of the device that they claim it is better than Apple’s Siri.

Like Siri, Sandfox’s integrated AI also has a name – Silvia – which is hungry to learn and grasps all her interactions with humans, growing smarter and more efficient with every voice command. Silvia can also grasp natural speaking patterns such as tone, mood, and accent.

Another India-based start-up, Hug Innovations, has created a smartwatch with added functionalities for heart rate monitoring. While heart rate monitoring is currently available in devices such as iPhones, Apple Watch, and Fitbit, it is not predictive in nature. At best, such devices use sensors to capture the heart rate.

Forget the electrocardiogram: the Hug watch can monitor and alert the user if there is an abnormality in the heart rate. This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here