Spintly’s contactless user experience makes it ideal Covid-19 solution: Rohin Parkar

Spintly is a truly wireless, cloud-based access control platform that uses wireless mesh and cloud technologies, for a seamless user experience and eliminates the cost and complexity of key cards and elaborate wiring for access control.

Spintly is based in India and the U.S., and backed by institutional venture capital firms and angel investors. Spintly’s hassle-free and contactless user experience makes it an ideal Covid-19 solution. It caters to various verticals including enterprises of all sizes as well as co-working spaces, multi-dwelling residential complexes, banking/financial institutions, and hospitality.

Rohin Parkar, Co-founder and CEO, Spintly, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: Tell us about the company and the services that your company offers?

Rohin Parkar: Spintly is a cloud-based, wireless door access control system for a seamless, hassle-free and contactless user experience. It is a modern access management system that combines the power of the cloud, smartphone and wireless technology. We decided to focus on the physical security aspect of the buildings to start with and built a complete end to end solution for access control and thus came up with Spintly.

Spintly started off as an IoT company, building IoT for everything, ranging from smart lights to smart locks and smart switches to smart plugs. Modern workspaces, co-working spaces, manufacturing, residential, hotels, financial industry, schools and colleges, co-living, fitness and wellness centers, are some of the sectors that our services cater to.

Spintly provides a seamless user experience with smartphone-based door access. It is also the world's first totally wireless access control system based on wireless mesh technology, which reduces infrastructure costs by more than 60%.

DQ: What were the company's goals and objectives when it was founded?

Rohin Parkar: The idea for Spintly was born in a building management room full of door controllers, fire alarm panels, lighting control panels and a lot of wires to connect all these systems. The hardware was occupying an entire room in the building and cables were running all across the building floors.

That’s when I and Malcolm D'souza (co-founder) conceptualized a controller-less and fully wireless building automation platform that would allow all devices like access control readers, smoke detectors, lights, etc to communicate with each other over a mesh network. These gadgets are capable of making their own decisions, resulting in a dispersed smart IoT network.

Thus, Spintly was created as a unified wireless platform for building automation as a result of this. To begin, we opted to concentrate on the physical security of the buildings and developed a complete end-to-end access control solution.

DQ: What are your growth plans for the next year?

Rohin Parkar: Spintly has tripled its revenues from FY 2020-21 to FY 2021-22, and we are expected to have Rs. 20 crore+ ($3 million) revenue in FY 2022-23. Spintly currently has 3,000+ customers with presence in India, UAE, Africa and the USA. We aim to increase the customer base this year.

DQ: What were the major challenges the company has faced till now?

Rohin Parkar: As Spintly entered the market, we immediately understood that scaling one product well in one market is very important. So, based on the market feedback and traction we decided to focus on access control for the SMB and co-working market segment.

The major challenge we faced was that with Covid-19, all offices were closed and we were in the business of giving employees access to their office spaces. It was the toughest time in our journey but in hindsight, I feel that the relevance of our wireless, cloud-based and contactless solution increased and really helped us scale as soon as offices started opening up.

We were able to get through these tough times by raising capital and firmly believing in our vision. We focused on the small set of customers we had and ensured they were happy with our product.

DQ: How is your company helping customers deliver relevant business outcomes through the adoption of the company’s technology innovations?

Rohin Parkar: Spintly is helping businesses in two ways. One way is when a customer buys the entire access control solution. In this case, the customer buys Spintly hardware and then starts using the Spintly cloud-based access control software. This software allows the customers to manage the access and attendance of their employees and users seamlessly. It allows smooth smartphone based door access to users which eliminates the need to manage physical access cards.

The second way the Spintly platform gets used is through the technology licensing model. OEM manufacturers use Spintly mesh firmware to power their products and then use the cloud-based APIs to create software for the specific use they are catering to. These are the two ways our Spintly technology innovations are helping relevant businesses meet their desired outcomes.

DQ: Please share information regarding your recent achievements and awards.

Rohin Parkar: Spintly created the first access control system based on thread technology and has been awarded the Thread Innovation Enabler Award, which recognizes early-stage companies from around the world, for their innovative approach to solving IoT challenges using the Thread protocol.

The award supports the creative possibilities that smaller companies can bring to the IoT ecosystem by giving them access to the resources and networking within the Thread Group.