MindTree Ltd, which plans to enter the $1-billion club by around 2015 or 2016, is keen on getting more revenues in the future from its product-engineering business. One of the ways in which it is trying to diversify is by getting into areas like highway toll.
“According to the National Highways Authority of India, the market for toll solutions was Rs 3,000 crore in 2010 and is likely to go up by four times in the next four years. We aim to capture around 15 per cent to 20 per cent of this market,” Mr Vinod Deshmukh, President, Technology and Products, Product Engineering Services, MindTree, told Business Line while launching MindTree's automatic traffic counting and classification system.
Foolproof
The system, said Mr Deshmukh, could identify different types of vehicles, like two-wheelers, cars, jeeps, trucks, by day or night, and even in bad light conditions and during rain. Such tools are used by state authorities when planning to expand roads, and can be used by toll owners to correlate plying vehicles with collections. The system uses a video camera, which Mr Deshmukh said could be used to identify vehicles. Since at a toll gate vehicles are charged differently, this system could ensure that unscrupulous and corrupt toll gate attendants do not hoodwink the owners.
“According to KPMG, around 15 per cent of the toll revenue goes in leakage. Using our system, this can be curbed,” said Mr Deshmukh. While he didn't share actual numbers, he said currently around 4 per cent of MindTree's revenues were product-based, and around 15-20 per cent of overall revenues would come from product-based solutions, including this system, over the next few years, when the company touches $1 billion in sales.
Stating that the solution was unique in India, Mr Deshmukh said it was superior to the traditional sensor-based counting and classification systems. “For a traditional sensor solution, you have to dig the road and the vehicle has to be driven over it slowly because only then it can measure the distance between the front and the rear wheels to get a fix on the size of the vehicle,” he pointed out.
“We have tested our solution on State Highway 35 near Bangalore, and we got an accuracy of 90 per cent to 95 per cent while counting at night.” Mr Deshmukh said his company's solution would work accurately and identify vehicles even if they were travelling at speeds as high as 80 km an hour.