The 17th ITCN Asia 2017, Pakistan’s biggest international exhibition and conference on Information Technology (IT) & Telecommunications which merged firefighting also attracted a huge number of exhibitors as well as visitors. The exhibition opened on September 21 was inaugurated by Syed Ismail Shah, Chairman PTA. The event emerged on over 150,000 sq feet of exhibition area where more than 600 international & domestic brands with 150+ foreign delegates and participants from more than 25 countries were present. Also, over 50 startup companies and experts along with a huge number of visitors graced the event. A number of professionals from various companies talked to Engineering Review on various aspects of the event and also issues concerning local engineering industry in Pakistan. Here are some of them:

Sajid Mehmood – SECCO Pak (Pvt.) Ltd.

On the last day, the participation is lower than our expectation. But still, it is good and there is a targeted participation. Therefore, we feel we have achieved our targets. Should this have been a joint IT-Fire Safety event? As regards strategies he said: we prefer individual categories for exhibition. This time all categories have been merged which has mixed the visitors. Clients and visitors have been divided and we can say they have been a bit confused one can say. They were finding it difficult to focus if it is IT or fire safety. There are concerns as regards CPEC. Local Pakistani markets and industry must grow. Let’s suppose we make doors of international quality. Yet we have faced difficulty some times that the client demands an imported product. Therefore, the government should protect products which are easily available in local market and meet international standards. What is the major hindrance that we face in competing imported products? Is it cost or technology? I think there is no issue with quality as we follow international standards. Yet our market is not that big and does not have much consumption. Therefore, the basic cost of our remains high due to low volume of production. That’s why you cannot compete. I have recently worked on a project requiring 5000 doors and it affected per unit cost by 30 percent. It was due to big volume. This way the industrial overhead would come down if the volume grows in other sectors also and they would be able to compete. If we get access to Chinese markets after CPEC then would it be possible that we can compete? I think it is a wishful thinking that we shall have access. The only step which may work is that the local industry should be given protection. In other case, our industry cannot survive in long term.

Ibrahim Ariqat – SFFECO Global

We are here for the very first time in this exhibition. The objective is to support our business. Happy to do business in Pakistan. Pakistan market is improving and there is a lot of potential here. The response in the exhibition is fair. We are here to support our distributors and boost confidence of our end users. We have also introduced our new products in the field of firefighting.We are a Middle Eastern company. We have launched a diesel engine here. We are producing it now. We are in Karachi for the first time as a company. Earlier, we have been focusing Islamabad. In Karachi we were here for a couple of tomes with our distributors.

 

Syed Ahmed Ali – Secure Vision

Basically it is an ICTN event but firefighting has also been merged with it. Since we don’t find any other event on fire fighting in Karachi, we participated in this exhibition. This time the participation is unprecedented and we find many companies which we did not expect to join. It was a good interaction. We met here with companies which we were doing business with for last many years but had not met them physically. This event offered us an opportunity to interact with them directly.In this background, merging IT with firefighting is a creative idea and we support it. Now, security field like CCTV is clubbed with IT. Cameras and networking are connected with IT and other products also.I think we have achieved our target and we have had a good audience during all three days here.CPECI always think positive. When I started my business some 14 years back I used to push the client to buy a security camera but today there is a market. It is natural when you have an expanded market there always emerges a competition which signifies quality of the product. I think this process always benefits the industry. Like the product we are selling is different from others. Why is that so? Because we distribute Flir’s product supported by R&D unlike Chinese who copy other companies. What we sell is a proactive system which gives alerts before any breach or incident. While, the other companies sell reactive system which gives you an access to video after happening. It means you spend millions on cameras just to get video so that you come to know how it all happened.Our system is called video analytics under which we give a certain command to camera which alerts you in case any abnormal activity is screened around. This is a new technology and making its market fast around the world. We are among few companies which are working on video analytics.

Syed Abdul Samad Director, Delta Fire Safety & Security System

Participation was good. This time round the arrangement here was different. I think it should have been separate like firefighting, safety and security. Firefighting should have been in the middle. Thus, this category is a bit disturbed. Hopefully it will be better in the future.CPECOf course we have some concerns. But there are some advantages as well. If Chinese companies are operating from here with their manpower, it makes their business expensive. Therefore, we can benefit subsequently. Like we are not only installing the system but also provide service to maintain it. Many Chinese companies are working with us. If Chinese provide equipment, we provide service.Technology transferTechnology is standardized. We cannot change it as there are global standards. Yes, if there is some change required in lines with such standards we do it to make the system run. Chinese also follow standards of world firefighting organization and thus the system goes on.

Hamid Jalal – Combine Network

We have been participating in this event since 2014. We are pioneer exhibitors of Security Asia. We did it in 2015 and 2016 also. So we have been part and parcel of this event. We were instrumental in inviting Chinese companies participating here. We have been doing business with Chinese companies since 2012.You people started with 2 halls and now it has developed into 6 halls. How about the business? It grew simultaneously?We don’t sell on the spot here. These exhibitions are aimed at spreading awareness as regards new products. The people are aware of security issues here in Pakistan therefore they visit to get to know about addressing them through security products. So they see which product can minimize their security threat. We are about to launch a new system which is called facial recognition system. The only solution in Pakistan. In this system, the facial data of wanted people would be stored and the camera will alert you once any criminal is detected. It can be installed at airports and other sensitive places. The camera will detect the people even if they change their getup.CPECI think the people who are working hard should not be concerned. Business is everywhere in the world. If we have ability to do business you should not be concerned about anything. If you cannot do it then you will get concerned about even tiny things. We should not have any issues with Chinese. Yes, there must be some terms and conditions set with Chinese. While doing business with Chinese, do you focus on technology transfer?Yes we do. Like I had demanded that we need a system which can detect wanted faces. Before that they provided cameras in which such feature was not included. They added alarm in the system on our requirement as we knew what we want in Pakistan’s specific security conditions.ParticipationIt was good. The concept of visitors is pretty clear now. I think it depends on exhibitor how smart system they are offering and defining it to clients. We believe in service along with doing business.