IMC 2026: Why Qubo sees India's smart home future in AI devices, not hubs

As Apple and Samsung push centralised smart home systems, India's Qubo is betting on AI-powered devices, local processing and country-specific use cases to drive adoption in a price-sensitive market

The global smart home market is moving towards a more centralised model. Apple is reportedly preparing a wider push into connected homes with a new home hub, while Samsung is adding more local control to SmartThings and companies such as UGREEN and Anker are introducing hubs that combine local storage, AI processing and smart home controls.

 

The premise behind the shift is straightforward. As homes accumulate cameras, locks, sensors, lights, appliances and other connected devices, a central device can bring them together, process data locally and manage automation without sending every command through the cloud.

 

But India may not necessarily follow that path. Indian device maker Qubo argues that the country's smart home market may take a different route, with intelligence built into individual products and connectivity designed around local use cases.

 

 

For Nikhil Rajpal, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Qubo, an Indian consumer device brand that also makes smart home products, the Indian smart home market needs to be built around the country's infrastructure, price points and consumer behaviour rather than by adapting products designed for Western markets.

 

"Do not look at the western solutions for India," Rajpal said.

 

The distinction matters because India's smart home market is still at an early stage. While global markets have moved towards broader connected-home installations, Rajpal estimates that smart home adoption in India remains below 2 per cent. Qubo has shipped 2.5 million devices over the past three to four years and expects to ship around one million devices this year, he said.

The company therefore sees the opportunity not in persuading consumers to buy a complete smart home, but in making individual devices useful enough to become part of everyday life.

The case against another box in the home

The hub has become an increasingly important part of the smart home conversation.

 

Apple's reported smart home hub, Samsung's SmartThings platform and newer products from companies such as UGREEN and Anker are all examples of the industry trying to put more intelligence and control into a central device. The approach also addresses one of the weaknesses of cloud-dependent smart homes: latency and loss of functionality when the internet connection goes down.

 

Rajpal, however, questions whether the same problem exists in the same form in India.

 

He uses security cameras as an example. In the US, battery-powered cameras are common, which makes continuous processing on the camera more difficult because AI workloads can consume battery power. A hub can therefore provide a place for processing and coordination.

 

Indian homes can have a different setup.

 

"Why would you put a battery in a camera when you can put a simple wire? The electrician does it for us," Rajpal said.

 

Qubo's cameras are therefore designed to perform analytics on the device itself, while streaming directly to a smartphone over Wi-Fi. "You don't need to have an extra piece of hardware," he said.

 

The distinction is important because the hub is not necessarily solving a universal smart home problem. It is often solving a problem created by the way a particular market's homes and devices are designed.

 

Qubo's argument is that if a camera can be powered continuously and has enough processing capability to understand what it sees, adding another device between the camera and the consumer may simply add cost and complexity.

 

The company does use hubs in specific situations. Qubo has a hub for some of its locks, particularly where a Bluetooth-connected lock needs to be accessed remotely. But Rajpal does not see the hub as an essential component of every connected home.

The next step is devices that can act

This is where Qubo's argument moves beyond hardware.

 

The company sees the next generation of connected devices as moving from simply being connected to being capable of acting on their own.

 

"When we started 8 years ago, the fact that you could build smart connected devices which came to your app was a big innovation," Rajpal said. "In today's world, that's not enough."

 

Qubo's cameras, he said, are now designed to identify intruders and trigger alarms, while its appliances can respond to environmental conditions such as temperature and pollution. The broader objective is to make devices "AI powered and proactive versus simply being connected".

 

That puts Qubo's approach somewhat at odds with the direction in which the larger technology companies are taking the smart home.

 

Google is integrating Gemini into its smart home ecosystem, while Amazon is adding AI capabilities to Alexa. The attraction of these systems is that a general-purpose AI assistant can become a conversational layer over multiple devices.

 

Qubo's argument is that not every task needs to go through that layer.

 

"Real intelligence happens if your software and AI run on the device," Rajpal said.

 

The company's cameras can distinguish between a person and other movement, he said, allowing the system to avoid sending alerts every time something moves in front of a camera. Qubo's AI Guard can also be configured for specific situations. A user can set a camera to detect a person during a particular period, such as overnight, and trigger an alarm or switch on a light whenever a particular action takes place.

 

The difference is subtle but significant. The smart home assistant model assumes that intelligence sits above the devices and tells them what to do. The edge-AI model puts at least some of that intelligence inside the device itself.

 

That can reduce the amount of data that needs to move to the cloud and allows a device to make certain decisions without waiting for a remote service.

Matter solves a different problem

The same logic explains Qubo's position on Matter, the industry standard intended to make smart home devices from different manufacturers work together.

 

Matter has been positioned as an answer to one of the biggest problems in smart homes: consumers can otherwise end up with devices tied to different ecosystems, apps and hubs. The standard allows compatible products to work across platforms, although differences in supported features and setup can still make interoperability more complicated than the label suggests.

 

Qubo supports technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and has integrations with Alexa and Google. But it has not yet adopted Matter.

 

"It's very easy for me to do it. But what do I do with it?" Rajpal said.

 

His argument is not that Matter is technically unnecessary. Rather, the Indian market may not yet have enough relevant Matter-based products to make the standard a meaningful differentiator for consumers.

 

"There's nothing in India being sold on Matter," he said, while adding that Qubo would adopt the standard when there is a practical reason to do so.

 

For Qubo, the question is therefore not whether a technology is becoming important globally, but whether it solves a problem for an Indian consumer today.

 

A smart plug, for example, does not necessarily need Matter if a cheaper Bluetooth connection can perform the same task. "Bluetooth is cheaper. People buy," Rajpal said.

 

This could become an important distinction as India's smart home market develops. Interoperability will matter more as households accumulate devices from different manufacturers, but standards alone may not be enough to drive adoption when consumers are still deciding whether they need the products in the first place.

India may adopt use cases before it adopts smart homes

The adoption numbers point towards another possibility. India's smart home market may not develop through consumers buying a complete ecosystem and then filling it with devices. Instead, individual products could create demand for the wider category.

 

Cameras are already showing signs of that pattern.

 

Rajpal says Qubo sells "a couple of thousands" of cameras a day, compared with around 50 doorbells and 50 locks a day. Purifier sales are around 100 a day, he said.

 

The difference, according to Rajpal, is less about technology than awareness.

 

He said consumers still do not always know that a camera can send alerts to a phone or that a doorbell can ring on a smartphone. Once consumers understand the use case and see the price, he expects adoption to increase.

 

This is significant because the global smart home market is often measured by the number of households with at least one connected device. Data from Statista puts global household penetration at more than 80 per cent in 2026, but average revenue per installed smart home at about $20, suggesting that much of the market is still based on individual devices rather than complete home automation systems.

 

India could therefore follow the same path, but from a much lower base.

 

The first smart device in a home may not be a hub. It could be a camera, lock, purifier, plug or doorbell that solves one specific problem.

Building for Indian problems

Qubo's strategy also illustrates why local AI could become important as the market expands.

 

Rajpal cites parking as one example. In India, cars are frequently parked on roads or in informal parking spaces. Qubo is developing an algorithm that can identify a designated parking spot and determine whether the owner's vehicle or somebody else's vehicle is occupying it.

 

That is not necessarily the kind of feature a global smart home platform would prioritise, but it reflects a broader point about AI-enabled hardware: the value of intelligence depends on the problems it is trained and designed to recognise.

 

The shift is from a device that records an event to one that understands an event and takes action.

 

That is also where Qubo sees an opportunity in connectivity.

4G instead of another hub

The cloud remains a weakness for connected devices. A device can continue to have power but become inaccessible if its Wi-Fi connection fails. Samsung's latest SmartThings changes, for example, are aimed at allowing compatible devices to communicate locally and continue working during temporary internet disruptions.

 

Qubo takes a different view of the problem for security products.

 

"If somebody's that concerned about critical safety... the camera will not be able to send a message because it's recording. Then the answer is 4G," Rajpal said.

 

Qubo is building 4G-connected cameras and said it planned to launch them the following month.

 

For a security camera, the distinction is practical. A local hub may allow a device to continue processing information inside the home, but if the purpose is to alert a family member when the home internet connection is unavailable, a cellular connection can bypass that dependency altogether.

It is another example of the same philosophy: solve the specific problem at the device level rather than adding another layer to the home.

The smart home may emerge from the edge

The direction of the global market remains towards greater integration. Apple is entering a category where Google, Amazon and Samsung already have extensive ecosystems, while Matter is attempting to make products from different manufacturers work together.

 

Central controllers could eventually become more useful as the number of connected devices in a household grows.

 

But India's early stage of adoption could produce a different trajectory.

 

Rather than starting with a hub and building an ecosystem around it, consumers may first buy products that solve immediate problems. Those products can then become increasingly intelligent, connected and capable of working with other devices.