Honeywell eyes AI space in India by 2018

The firm will be bringing in consumer products to India, says Dino Asvaintra

Commercial products major Honeywell is coming up with artificially intelligent consumer good products next year. The firm, known for diverse enterprise products and solutions globally and in India, is now focusing on increasing its brand recognition among consumers by leveraging its expertise with specific need-based offerings in developing markets like India.
 
Dino Asvaintra, vice-president and general manager for Honeywell’s homes business in the Greater China/high-growth regions, says the firm will be bringing in consumer products to India. It has identified categories such as solutions for air pollution, water, food safety and security as potential growth areas.
 
“While we are known for our enterprise offerings, we decided to market our products with focus on the consumer market, which gave birth to the home business division. Now we are working on pulling together all relevant technologies from our diverse businesses and coming up with integrated solutions for consumers,” he said.

“We are moving towards artificially intelligent offerings. We have already built a fully integrated could platform, app and automated devices. In China, we have just finished the integration and will be launching by first quarter of 2018 and months later in India.”
 

By using its expertise in air purification business that it ventured into 60 years ago to serve Nasa, it is now looking to tap into the growing demand for purifiers in India. As in global markets, a majority of its over a billion dollar (more than Rs 6,400 crore) annual revenues in India comes from its enterprise businesses. According to the firm, growth rates in the past few years have been two to three times of the GDP growth here.
 

While it gets 40 per cent of consumer business sales from the online channel here, it is expected to surpass other channels in future as tie-ups with major e-commerce channels such as Amazon and Flipkart will be leveraged to reach the hinterland.