Invendis: Expanding operations in Africa and Asia

TowerXchange recently caught up with Satish Kulkarni, CEO of Invendis to get an update on their latest projects, plans to expand their footprint, and successes in Africa and Asia. We discussed best practices for inventory reduction, fighting fuel theft, site monitoring and capturing data on energy usage.

TowerXchange: Please give us an update on some of your new projects and milestones since we last spoke.

Over the last two years we have moved into several new countries and territories. Two to three years back a lot of our business was from Africa in countries like Tanzania and Malawi. Over the past four to five years we’ve installed systems in over 4,000 sites in Africa; we work with almost all of the towercos in Africa. We have some business from Helios Towers in Africa, and we’re about to sign a contract in Ghana and Tanzania with them. We’re still active in Africa and continue to grow there.

In the Middle East we have a contract through Nokia as a primary contractor, and we’re doing work for them on 275 sites increasing to 1,000 sites.

In Asia we recently won a contract with edotco to install systems on 12,000 sites in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. We are deploying 3,000 systems in Bangladesh and 3,000 in Malaysia, and then we will deploy another 6,000 by the end of 2016. There is also a lot of activity in India; we estimate that towercos are using RMS on close to 200,000 sites. We are installed on 3,400 of Ascend Telecom’s sites and we also have an order from Intelligent Energy who are handling the energy assets on GTL’s sites. There is a lot of consolidation happening now and new capex is being deployed including energy monitoring and optimisation. At one point 95% of our business was coming from outside India, and now over the past two to three years things have been changing. We are also deployed on 2,500 of American Tower’s sites in India, and we manage another 5,000 towers for a power equipment company.

Over the past five or six years we’ve deployed on over 20,000 sites in all of our markets. There is consolidation happening across Africa and Asia and our business will grow there as a result. There are some huge potential opportunities in countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar and Singapore. Prices for connectivity have come down and a lot of companies and governments are switching to green energy, batteries and hybrid solutions. We feel that over the next three to four years there will be a lot of interest in replacing diesel generators with batteries, and our solutions will play a role in managing these.

TowerXchange: Do you have any success stories to share?

In Ghana we were able to bring down the inventory cost for the towercos by 20-25%. There were some major issues with the grid there and the power was down about three hours per day once every four or five days. We installed our system and it greatly increased the efficiency of the sites.

There are also difficult conditions in countries like Bangladesh that experience annual flooding. The sensors that we installed on the sites were able to detect when flooding of the equipment was imminent so that clients could be notified and measures could be taken.

Our project in Iraq is challenging due to the security issues and political situation, not to mention the environmental conditions. However we had experience operating in desert conditions from a previous deployment in Oman for Omantel a couple of years back. We provided automated coverage of 300 remote exchanges; we’re in talks to install on their towers as well to collect operational data which should happen later this year.

We’ve also handled extreme cold at -10 or -20 degrees in some of the more remote northern sites in India. Two or three years ago about 10-15% of our clients were MNOs but now it’s mostly towercos.

TowerXchange: We’ve heard about markets where 30% or more of diesel has been stolen, 15% of batteries stolen. What can towercos and MNOs do to improve security at remote cell sites?

This is a major issue in a lot of countries, any market where the grid is unreliable; people can steal upwards for 160 litres of fuel and if the readings are not accurate it’s hard for towercos to judge how much fuel has been used and whether any is missing.

When you install highly accurate sensors they have the ability to interface with the site management system and update data on fuel levels in real time. Clients can do an end-to-end audit of fuel use and power generated to get an idea of how much the site requires in general, and any abnormal activity usually indicates theft. Most of our clients in Africa have said that pilferage has been reduced considerably and within eight to ten months they’ve recouped the cost of the system.

Our systems also protect expensive batteries by embedding sensors on them that trigger an alarm if they are moved out of the site, alerting clients that they have to go to the site to investigate.

TowerXchange: Since a lot of fuel pilferage originates within the supply chain, is there a risk of remote monitoring sensors being damaged by staff or subcontractors? What can be done to prevent this?

This does happen and it can be difficult to manage. With remote management the sites don’t need to be visited on a regular basis; workers can go when required to investigate an alarm or make occasional deliveries. The increased efficiency of RMS means that there is less work to be done and fewer hours are required which hits the ground crews financially.  It’s important to invest in the ground crews and involve them in the security of the site, and some companies offer rewards for reports about tampering.

TowerXchange: How can data from site monitoring be integrated with maintenance workflows and job ticketing to reduce O&M costs?

Data from the site goes directly to the ground crews and they are notified via their phones or computers. This constant flow of actionable data has greatly decreased opex since clients know where and why they need to do site visits. Prior to this, an engineer could make a scheduled site visit, identify a problem, but not have the necessary equipment to fix it since they didn’t know about it in advance. Now the multiple site visits have been greatly reduced and travel is always based on need. This has been especially valuable in Africa where the sites are more remote, the roads are difficult, and hours of travel in four-wheel drive vehicles is required.

TowerXchange: CCTV is expensive to install and footage needs a lot of bandwidth – under what circumstances is this investment worthwhile, and how can costs be contained?

The cameras that we install on sites are activated when they detect movement and grab images of what’s going on in the tower. This has helped us overcome the challenge of expensive cameras that are on 24/7 and require constant power and bandwidth to transfer images when most remote sites don’t have a data connection. Multiple cameras running constantly would be expensive and unnecessary when a small amount of footage can identify the perpetrators, or let you know that it’s a false alarm caused by an animal or a branch.

TowerXchange: How do you customise alarms to ensure the customer isn’t overwhelmed and can focus only on alarms which require action?

We provide complete end-to-end security including motion detectors on the doors, smoke detectors, water detectors and other combinations of sensors. These provide a wide variety of parameters but the clients don’t require all of them so the granular data is collected and can be built into reports that can be used later. Some data are critical and some are less so; we categorise them based on the action needed to respond to them. Some are extremely critical like fire alarms, but they all have varying degrees of importance and escalations that go up the command chain. It’s all differentiated by the action that is needed to be taken.

TowerXchange: How do tower operators translate RMS data into actionable intelligence?

Here are two examples: with RMS a client can continuously monitor the charge and health of the batteries and identify any one that isn’t performing. When a battery isn’t performing it’s a drain on resources; it draws more power and decreases the amount of power available. As soon as this situation is identified the battery can be replaced, saving resources by acting on the problem as early as possible.

For the second example, all of the information on the tower is constantly available, and if the power goes off for 12 hours, the system will also remember that it went off for seven to eight hours the previous week. This can be extrapolated to all the towers in that region and the data can tell whether there is a trend of increasing power cuts requiring more fuel for backup generators. Many times the rolling power cuts in these places are not announced and it helps to have data on them to put into actionable intelligence like this. Clients can get a very detailed set of data on the grid situation, and once they have nationwide deployment of RMS on their sites they may even be able to share or monetise it.