Beacon-In is a technology startup based in Singapore that offers iBeacon based solutions, a readymade platform for services and merchants to deliver the iBeacon interactions. iBeacon Technology has a lot of potential in the travel and tourism industry with the technology being adopted in museums, theme parks, hotels, airports and airline lounges. “Our product and service allow businesses to send contextual based information to its users, thereby providing a unique user engagement model. The technology has been adopted by leading brands and services in the United States and Europe such as Virgin Atlantic, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Apple Stores and Major League Baseball. The technology has also been used in festivals such as Coachella and Cannes Film Festival,” says Aditya Haripurkar, founder and CEO, The Socialmill. iBeacon Technology is the name of the Apple patented technology that would be installed in the premises of the clients. It is a brand new technology introduced by Apple last year, and works with both Android and iOS.
There have been many interesting installations of this technology – iBeacon is being installed in Regent Street, London which is one of the most famous shopping streets in the world, and Dutch theme park Fluwel’s Tulpenland is the first in Europe to install the technology to attract more visitors. An iBeacon prototype was recently created in the Antwerp museum – The Rubens House. While Virgin Atlantic has installed this technology at Heathrow Airport, American Airlines has launched a six-month pilot at Dallas/ Fort Worth International Airport. The James Hotels, with locations in New York, Chicago and Miami have also introduced the James Pocket Assistant based on this technology.
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Aditya Haripurkar
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iBeacon Technology in a nutshell is proximity based alerts and contextual based alerts. “So as and when you walk past, say Chinatown in Singapore, you get a video alert about the history behind Chinatown, or if you pass by a museum artifact, you get to know how the artifact was created. How the technology works is that a small beacon device communicates with your smartphone application and works on Bluetooth,” explains Haripurkar.
The instrument is installed at the destination and it communicates to the traveller’s smartphone. No data, no Wi-Fi is required, just the Bluetooth function has to be on. “The beauty of this is that the user has the choice of whether he wants to receive these messages. So if I am at a museum and I want to know what each of the objects around me are, I can get the information. The beacon will get smaller with the advancement of technology. It is not visible to the user and sends out the alerts,” mentions Haripurkar.
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Harsh Sharma
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There are two requirements for the technology to work – the application should be downloaded and the Bluetooth should be switched on. The content is uploaded on the backend. “We can push images, video, maps, text, content, locations, whatever the establishment using this technology wants to push. While newsletters, promotional emails and SMSes annoy us, with this device you have the option of what you want to access,” points out Harsh Sharma, strategy and design head, The Socialmill. The plan is to partner with tourism boards who can deploy the technology all across the board. It is a unique user engagement model wherein both the user and business benefits. For instance, in a souvenir shop, the user can go and purchase the object after getting complete information about it. People can understand more about the object if it is tourism related.
Betting on Bluetooth
The name of the technology is BLE 4.0, that is Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0. It will be in all the latest smartphones. “One of the reasons why we are betting on Bluetooth is that a whole wave of smart devices are going to come, and everything can be communicated over Bluetooth – from home automations to smart wearables. We believe that Bluetooth is going to make a comeback and all interactions will happen over Bluetooth. It will be the natural thing for users to switch on to Bluetooth,” says Haripurkar. In Chinatown Singapore Wi-Fi is already installed, but the technology does not work on Wi-Fi so a lot of people have asked for installation of Bluetooth technology. “We have built our own platform based on iBeacon Technology but what we also do is if Chinatown has its own application we give them something called SDKs which they integrate in their application and we give the beacon devices to the establishments that are interested,” he adds.
The company provides its clients the technology, the backend, however they can provide the front-end as well. “We can also provide them creative services, the content. However we have seen that most of the clients want to have control over the content. It can be completely customised how the business wants it and it is as easy as updating a Facebook profile,” states Sharma. Another important aspect is that a business can change the messages that it wants every minute and can tailor the messages. For example, the proximity of the beacon is 50 metres so when a visitor or customer enters the region he gets an alert and when he exits the region he gets a separate alert.
India market
Beacon-In is among the first few players not only in India but Asia as well, providing end-to-end iBeacon solutions. “It is a niche concept in India, we would play a consultancy role in telling travel and tourism partners how to adopt this technology – from travel agencies to hotels, if they want to install the beacons,” says Haripurkar. Pointing out that a lot of people are experimenting with the technology in the West, he mentions that he is working with a travel agency in Singapore – whenever a group of travellers stop at a particular location they receive an alert on the significance of the place. Even on hop-on hop-off bus tours, tourists can be directed towards the relevant areas of interest for them.
There are lot of use cases of the technology at airports. “We are looking to partner with airlines in India, for instance from the time of check-in to the lounges, and even while sitting inside the plane as the technology does not interfere with the equipment of the plane. In India our strategy is to make it very niche,” informs Sharma.
Currently there is awareness of this among the tech community but nobody has developed something concrete. “The number of people using smartphones in India is humongous. Our next challenge is to get them using this technology. That will happen trough demonstration effect, that is why we are using case studies in Singapore and showing them here. That’s what we are building upon and aiming at,” explains Sharma.
Beacon-In’s strategy is that the brand they tie up with should proactively promote it through its social media channels, provide incentives to users to use it. “At the end of the day it helps the users make more informed decisions. That’s the approach we are taking initially. In due course in iOS system you can get an alert on what’s a popular app in your area, for instance if an iBeacon app is popular in a museum they just unlock it and takes you to the app. That is what we have introduced to the next version, which is iOS 8,” says Sharma, adding that down the line as per patents submitted by Apple payments can be made using this technology. “Our whole focus is on banking upon this technology as it will take off. It is effective, low-cost and can be used using the simplest of phones,” he asserts.
Beacon-In’s business model is based on licensing model, the beacon is given free. The market price of the devices is US$ 30, which is cheap compared to outdoor advertising options like digital signage or billboard images. “Currently we are building in the backend, the software to upload indoor maps. It can create heat maps and you can know which part of the museum is attracting maximum visitors. Even for a conference organiser the technology is very useful – they can get updates on the people who have already checked in the meeting room, those who have not checked in are sent alerts to join the meeting. We are building the backend platform and integrating analytics into that,” says Haripurkar.
The user does not have to download thousands of individual apps, everything is there on one app, one platform. It will be a directory of iBeacon interactions.
