Innovation. Incubation. Growth

 BITS, Pilani recently announced that students and faculty would be allowed to take a year of to go and build their own startups (read the article here).  This seems like a brilliant idea to create greater institute-industry collaboration.  At the same time this is likely to foster innovation too. This also reminded me of my days at 3i Infotech.  PREMIA, the insurance software, had established itself as a market leader in the Middle East and Africa, and plans were afoot to expand its footprint to Europe and the USA.  This vision meant that we would have to scale up significantly, both in terms of people and technology.   Here’s how we went about it:

1.      Aavishkar: An innovation forum with a contest was launched to get people to work on technological aspects that would enhance functional and technical capabilities, create integrations to third-party applications, and mobility applications.  Enthusiastic participants offered several innovative ideas, some of which were incremental, while there were some  game-changing entries too.

2.      PREMIA University: We also figured out that we would need to create a huge resource pool to support the development and implementation efforts.  PREMIA University was set up with the intention of creating a resource pool that would ensure a continuous stream of students who were familiar with the domain, and were familiar with PREMIA.   A PREMIA lab was set up at VIT, and we spent time teaching students the nuts and bolts of software implementation, including domain knowledge.   

Both these initiatives helped us scale quickly.  The PREMIA Lab we set up at some of the colleges went on to create job opportunities for students, who later went on to join some of our clients in the Middle East and Africa.  The Great Resignation has created this need to increase interaction with universities and colleges, to support and nourish innovation so that companies are able to scale up their productivity, and benefit from the huge opportunities that technological advancements are bringing up.  The BITS experiment seems to be a step in the right direction, and it would be good to see industry also step up and meet this initiative half-way.

 The Insurance Regulatory Development Authority (IRDA), keeping pace with advances in technology announced add-on covers to the Motor – Own Damage Policy; The Pay-as-you-Drive and Pay-How-You-Drive are two add-on covers intended to harness technology giving insurers the ability to customize their motor insurance.  Version 1.0 of these add-ons are based merely on declarations made by customers and providing information on odometer readings.  However, given the advances in automobile telematics, Pay-as-you-drive and Pay-how-you-drive will soon become more than just catch-words.

On-board Diagnostic and Reporting devices, GPS, and wireless communication capabilities come together to provide the ability to compute premiums based on vehicle usage, driver behavior, location, and vehicle condition. This opens the possibility for dynamic pricing of premiums based on how often owners use their vehicles. Where owners have more than one vehicle, it also gives the opportunity to apportion premiums across these vehicles based on how often each of these vehicles are used.

On-board technology can also provide information on routes through which the vehicle passes, speed at which the vehicle is driven, distance covered, and other parameters such as wear-and-tear on brakes and clutch. This makes it possible for  insurers to get even more accurate pricing algorithms that reflect the true risk to the insurance company.  Customers also benefit from customized premiums instead of the one-size-fits-all premiums that are prevalent today.

With ADAS technology getting more sophisticated in automobiles, we will have many more parameters that can be tracked for ensuring safer driving habits and adjusting premiums according to driver behavior.  For example, Heads-up-display ensures that drivers can keep his eyes on the road and not be distracted by digital information being pushed to them. It may soon be possible to correlate this data with information being passed on from wearable devices to track driver alertness, stress levels, and the like. Research has shown that installation of safety and monitoring devices improved driver behavior.  The day will not be far off, when machines will be reporting on our performance, rather than drivers reporting on car performance!

“Thank you, Mark!  It was a pleasure having you at the wheel.  You did not get distracted – the phone was on silent during the drive, you changed radio stations only once, and overall your attention to what was happening on the road was good.  You did brake hard once at the Metro Square Junction.  That could have been avoided had you slowed down as you approached the junction.  Nevertheless, overall the car handling was also good. Air pressure and other vehicle parameters are also good.  Car maintenance has also been good. Overall, you deserve a 4.5.  Good Night.”

This might very well be a report that will go out to the owner at the end of each day!  Some of that data may also go to the insurance company.  And if he has been speeding, the Motor Vehicle Department may also get notified.  Interesting times ahead!

Solsten has been at the leading edge of building intelligent solutions for businesses by collating data from various sources and providing visual insights that allow businesses to make better decisions.  For more information, get in touch with us