Wipro Lighting bets on global partnerships for smart lighting solutions

Wipro Lighting, a business of Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting (WCCL), is sprucing up its range by focusing on IoT-powered intelligent lighting solutions and getting into collaboration with global majors such as Schréder and Cisco.

In order to light up smart cities, the Bengaluru-based company has entered into an alliance with Schréder to bring their patented technology and products like smart streetlights and smart poles to India.

“This partnership is to address the premium outdoor segment solutions for smart city applications where lighting can become the key in data collection and distributed for other services to the civic authorities,” said Anuj Dhir, Vice President, Lighting Business, WCCL.

Until now, outdoor lighting installations have had a pole and a light fixture. For all other applications such as public wi-fi and CCTV cameras, another pole and electricity point is required from where power can be supplied. However, the smart poles will give a comprehensive solution where light fixture, CCTV camera, and public wi-fi access points will be available on a singular pole. These multi-purpose poles will also have motion sensors to track the traffic movement, air quality sensors and electric vehicle charging points. The civic authorities will be able to collect data on air quality and traffic movement through these smart poles.

The two companies will also be manufacturing smart street lights which can be controlled by the civic authorities through a common dashboard. Also diagnostic analysis of which light is working, which is not can be done in real time which would cut down the response time to citizens.

“Although Schréder has built a footprint over the last few decades in India, this new partnership with Wipro Lighting will enhance the offering to cities across India. The partnerships’ synergies will drive the increased demand for more interconnectivity while ensuring a safe and sustainable environment, and address some of the challenges of rapid urbanisation,” said Karim Boutaour, AMEA strategic and marketing director, Schréder Group.

To begin with, the smart poles and smart lights will be installed in smart cities in the next 3-4 months, said Dhir. The manufacturing will be carried out at the company’s Aurangabad plant in Maharashtra.

The lighting segment, which accounts for less than two per cent of WCCL’s total revenue of $1 billion (around Rs 66.3 billion), is also coming out with innovative lighting solutions for smart workspaces. It has collaborated with Cisco for Power on Ethernet (PoE)-based lighting solutions through which power can be carried via data cables. This technology has been installed at multiple locations in India.

The company is also making efforts to commercialise Li-Fi technology in India, wherein lights beam internet connectivity. It has certain advantages such as working across higher bandwidth, working in areas susceptible to electromagnetic interference and offering higher transmission speeds.

WCCL is also working on human-centric lighting solutions for new age offices, which follows the pattern of the natural light and increases productivity at workplace.