Avaya in talks with States to set up emergency response system

A number of State governments are keen to set up an integrated emergency response system to facilitate faster response time to emergency calls using multiple communication channels, including mobile and social media, said Vishal Agrawal, Managing Director, India and SAARC, Avaya, a US-based company, which has implemented a couple of such projects.

Avaya is working with Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh governments to implementan emergency response system. “We are in discussions with 10 other State governments, including Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, for implementation of this system,” he said.

The Dial 100 project by Uttar Pradesh police was designed to provide integrated emergency services across the entire State on a 24x7 basis. Avaya established a centralised contact centre in Lucknow to facilitate faster response time and the ability to support more than 600 calls at any given time.

Digital drive The system creates a detailed digital trail of all activities electronically without police intervention. It also allows citizens to upload pictures or videos, which gets tagged with their calls and forwarded to police station concerned electronically, he said.

For Avaya, 15-20 per cent of India revenues comes from government projects. “We expect it to be 20-30 per cent in the next 18-24 months,” he said. Avaya provides portfolio of software and services for contact centre and unified communications with integrated, secure networking — offered on premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid. In India, it has over 5,000 customers — from 50 users to 50,000 users. Clients such as BSNL and Airtel use Avaya’s solutions, he said.

Avaya is also looking at smart city projects but these are still at a nascent stage.

The basic elements of smart cities such as emergency response system, traffic system are coming in now and will see more of them in the next couple of years, he said.