Adithya Raj: Today, we dive deep into the world of Consumer Electronics Show which is CES which happens and Vegas every single year so to discuss more about CES we have our own CEO Mr Ravi so Ravi what were the key talking points for CES this year
Ravi Kuppuraj: Hi Adithya first of all it's just so exciting to start the year with CES the amazing thing about CES is it brings together so many people from so many different walks of life business industry and so on let me tell you a story I was on the plane to CES from Boston about 90% of the people were actually going to CES on that flight and guy sitting next to me it was an 80-year-old person who said he's been going to CES for about 25 years and then I said him is it for what work he said no this is on my own time in dime this is the coolest thing I do every year and I was so disappointed I couldn't do it the year of the of Covid so he had the CES magazine in his hand and his interests were all over from kind of the latest gadgets to electronics to entertainment and so on so it's just amazing to just see part of
Ravi Kuppuraj: It it was great to see the energy and excitement back we had over 4,000 plus what exhibitors about 150,000 plus people people so to really see the energy the crowds back was just amazing
Adithya Raj: Nice so let just curious because this is the fourth CES which I have attended and curious to know how many CES have you attended because you've been in the US for quite a long time and second is why does CS happen in Vegas I mean like that's a party capital of the world
Ravi Kuppuraj: So exactly way it happens in Vegas because it is the party capital of the world you know it's got it's got best the best connectivity easy to get to and there are so many things to do the infrastructure is awesome and it's just one of those things that very few people say I don't want to go to Vegas so that's why everybody gets there well as far as I am concerned I think it is my 9th through 10th i have to go back and check but that's been spread over a 15-20 year period and there was a a few years when I did make it in fact I think I made it to the 2021 it was one of my last trips before the whole world kind of shut down for you know Covid and after that I think it was a in fact very last large trip which of large trip which I did and then of course everything kind of shut down so it's it's I always look forward to it it always amazes me in some way shape or form as to things that I didn't think I would see I would see it
Adithya Raj: So Ravi when we were walking across the convention center and I saw a lot of of holding saying 100 years so just wanted to understand what was it all about I did not get the time to
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah this actually was a kind of a Monumental year so this was the 100th year of CTA which is the consumer technology Association so consumer technology Association has literally 100 years old and they have been advocates for really bringing standards bringing advocacy bringing laws governing things like taxes to how products should be governed the regulatory standards and really kind of driving this force and they were the people actually who set up the Consumer Electronics Show to begin with and it's been a great journey with for the CTA as well as the CES which is the actual show so that is really the governing body for Consumer technology in the US and increasing worldwide
Adithya Raj : Okay okay so Ravi like you said there were more than 4,000 plus exhibitors so so what were the key tees which you observed this year
Ravi Kuppuraj: So in my opinion there were like three very very very big tees this year the first one is AI and AI in everything and we've seen AI before but this is where AI is kind of becoming persuasive for example an ebike which has got a little display with ChatGPT kind of built in at the onset it kind of seems like a bit of a gimmick why do you want chatbot on your e-bike, but it goes beyond kind of the things that you would get with Google Maps this is conversational so you're kind of on your ebike and say, “Hey I want to get a burger,” or “Hey where do I go park,” or you know “What is the traffic like,” in something so it kind of brings that conversational element of it so a lot of companies are kind kind of doing it we saw Volkswagen actually have ChatGPT as a standard feature in production model
Ravi Kuppuraj: We saw some collaborations with BMW and Amazon in bringing the whole Bedrock technology into cars Beyond Alexa so you have an even better Alexa a smaller Alexa if if you can imagine
Adithya Raj: So yeah actually there were a couple of boots which I went in and I saw AI there was a Samsung fridge which which could actually tell that a food was going bad which is kept inside the fridge and it was suggesting recipes which could be made out of that food which is there similarly I saw a mattress company which uses AI so depending on the body condition the mattress edges itself to the body type so pretty much AI was there everywhere and looks like very soon it's it's going to be in every single product across the Spectrum we use
Ravi Kuppuraj: Very much so very much so right the thing you mentioned about the bed for example I think sleep itself was very big you know it is kind of almost the the new parameter for health the one which you talking about it goes back to it it goes back to some of the other technology I mean there were things like the Sleep Number bad Etc which we' had seen in the past but this is a whole another level. Similarly on the appliance side right so in addition to the fridge you know there were things that were mainstream production models for machines which were so much smarter so it kind of takes almost the guesswork of doing a lot of these things so it is almost making AI useful I think that was the big theme
Ravi Kuppuraj: From a tech perspective we also saw for example Microsoft one of their announcements was a new keyboard and you're wondering what's with the new keyboard you've seen the whole Windows button in the past right so that was a few years ago Microsoft keyboards came up with the Windows button which was the four little squares guess what the new Microsoft keyboard has a chat GPT button now actually it has a co-pilot button and co-pilot is becoming such an integral part of Microsoft and its ecosystem so again kind of getting into the mainstream of a lot of things and making it real I think that was a big one secondly the second big theme was
Ravi Kuppuraj: You know we touched upon Smart Home Smart Living more and more of that there are smart mixers there were other things that cut smarter and smarter around the house we' always seen things like cleaning robots and things like that now they've gone to a whole new level third I think the big theme clearly was of course the fun part of it which was also EVs and then the integration of more Advanced Battery Technology along with AI and so on so we saw a lot of innovation so those are the key three things which is again Ai and kind of really the integration of that into smart smart living Smart Homes and finally lots of EVS lots of cars including flying cars which we saw which were pretty cool
Adithya Raj: Yeah so I was curious that you know I was actually surprised when I saw cars in U boots of LG Electronics Samsung Sony I mean apart from the usual automobile companies and that was pretty cool all of these cars from especially one from Sony was really really amazing and they told me that they'll be start taking orders from early next year
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah
Adithya Raj: And Sony having a car with with the kind of content they have I pretty much doubt whether people will go back home and watch their TVs
Ravi Kuppuraj : Absolutely I mean there is that convergence happening it remains to be SE I mean I think fundamentally they've driven technology that is been their core competency and applied it to a lot of these things including automobiles we saw the Huawei had a car as well in fact it's supposedly live and it's a production model in China so that's pretty cool so we we see more and more of that kind of integration where kind of people bring their entertainment infotainment and really consumer engagement into things such as Vehicles so we're beginning to see a lot more of that as well
Adithya Raj: Okay so Ravi CES is a stage where major Tech announcement happens and so what were the some major take announcement which which we saw this year
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah so one thing back to the theme was in addition to explosive new announcements which I'll talk about in a second I think we saw a lot more of fruition of past announcements actually happening you know what we saw as a prototype for a transparent TV you had two companies LG and Samsung kind of battling it out but who's got the better transparent TV which was pretty cool so what was kind of like a prototype early thing last year is real so there are many many instances of that
Adithya Raj: Just curious on this but like some sometimes this company is like I wonder whether customer would have ever asked that give us a transparent TV right and and and you know I heard the cost it was 200k I was like how many of people across the world can have heard a TV which has cost 200k
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah it's but you you look at what OLED TVs cost about 5 years ago right so these costs come down very very quickly once they get to scale and that's the thing I don't know if I wanted a transparent TV but after I saw it I wish I had one it's like something you can just put it on a window I mean people were saying maybe it can be your window and imagine that you can look out when you don't want to watch TV and otherwise you're watching TV so that was Big
Ravi Kuppuraj: Apple with its new VR headset I think that was a major announcement because for a while everybody thought you know after kind of meta kind of quest for a quest if you will kind of really didn't go as far as meta wanted with the meta wore people were kind of going away from kind of this 3D augmented reality virtual reality type headsets but Apple introduced one and if anybody can kind of do something different I think that'll be apple there were a bunch of other announcements as well like Nvidia on the tech side made a lot of huge chip announcements and one of things with Nvidia was not only they made announcements they actually showcase products with so many different kinds of companies be it gaming be it Computing be it automobile and so on so those are some of the big announcements per se brand new that I really saw
Ravi Kuppuraj: There were a lot of other Innovations but as far as you know what did people announce really I think people actually did more showing products than talking about products like in the past
Adithya Raj: So we spoke about announcements we spoke about the themes I'm sure there were many things which were wow unique and and which was out of this world so if you could just share a couple of them
Ravi Kuppuraj: Sure I think for me the biggest wow thing was the flying car from this company called XPeng which is a China based company it was mind boggling it kind of looked like a more sporty version of the Cyber truck from Tesla more colorful it had this kind of large pickup with an angular cover and it they actually they didn't let me take a ride in it unfortunately just like they didn't let you either and they didn't really show it flying but had videos of it but what was cool was actually showed at work which is you know the car looked it looked spectacular and you had a retractable kind of you know back panel which went down and then this whole drone like thing that kind of came up about so it's immense it's it looked immense it looked huge but it was really well thought out and XPeng is literally going to get that into production in less than 18 months and I also learned a lot more about XPeng actually they they are one of the leading EV companies in China and they are really you know chinese Tesla
Ravi Kuppuraj: So I think that was a wow thing so I walked into the Kohler Co which is which is which makes you know bathroom fixtures right so they have the smart toilet it when you walk in the room it knows whether it's you or your wife and completely sets the right settings for everything in in the bathroom the shower to the toilet to etc. I thought that was pretty pretty cool and it really works and it's something very close to being released as well so very very different set of things in terms of what was wow and again that's kind of the beauty about CES where it brings so many different aspects that you wouldn't think would come together but it does
Adithya Raj: So Ravi U what were the Breakthrough Technologies which we saw in smart variables especially smart watches and audio devices
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah one of the cool breakthroughs I saw was finally I saw something like a real product with translation earphones so it is something where you just put it on and it translates
Adithya Raj: I can speak in Hindi and and you'll get a translation in English yeah like you
Ravi Kuppuraj: Know I was thinking you can speak in your Mangalore Kannada and I can even understand that in in English or regular Kannada maybe but you know that's getting real I think that real time processing intelligence AI integrated into a form factor that was pretty cool I thought it still had a few kind of quirks but that was very interesting you know the other nice thing with CES is you know we have so many vendors Partners people from other kind of Industries who come there as well and as we are evolving from just becoming a Pure Play device company with variable to really evolving our ecosystem to bring propositions and other things it was great to see some of these people kind of bring their technology as well so as far as digital Health was concerned there were three or four things that was very interesting you know one of them is more and more WiFi based kind of Technologies for things like security monitoring of people like when they're when they're walking when they're falling and things like that because Wi-Fi can kind of look through walls so that was cool
Ravi Kuppuraj: A couple of companies also had radar based technologies that could be integrated into everyday things that can also look at movements movement of your chest to look at respiration movement of your heart and so on that was very interesting as well we saw I saw one company actually more than one company which had non-invasive glucose which is getting closer and closer to reality I think that is something that is also a technology that will be a key part of our future as we look at that it going to be a key parameter for us so that was interesting to see and finally we saw I saw more than one company that was looking at things for asthma and breathing and kind of respiration which I think for India especially with our levels of you know pollution and concerns about it air quality Etc it's not just about people with asthma but really monitoring the air around you how are you breathing the pollution level so there's quite a few Technologies integrated into devices that I saw which I think could be very very interesting for us in the coming you know months and years.
Adithya Raj: So Ravi finally what does this mean for Titan
Ravi Kuppuraj: I think all of these Technologies are kind of the convergence of personal health digital Health Wellness consumer Centric design AI really brings home everything that we are thinking about doing in the whole world of smart and variables for for Titan these are all extremely important facets of what need to be put together with a very consumer Centric approach right so one of the things that Titan we do is really deeply try to understand what consumers want we're still on the journey but these things are great enablers for us to kind of make it part of our Arsenal part of our product set solution set to bring the best consumer experience for the future
Ravi Kuppuraj: So I think a lot of these technology are going to be a key part of our future some sooner than others and I think that's where it all kind of comes home for Titan in addition to that we also had some of our key technology Partners who brought their technology to CES as well you know it is an example there is core which is from Green Tech the company that we're working with to bring to market the core body temperature sensing that will be a key part of our smart watches at some point very very soon similarly Phillips brought some of its technology that we're also incorporating now in terms of algorithms Etc it was a great opportunity to kind of bring them along with some other partners that we are working on the ODM OEM front as well so I think it was a great kind of really meeting of the key people of our ecosystem that are very important to us
Adithya Raj: So CES is a platform for Technologies which are present across the globe so specifically if I have to ask from an India perspective because we have so many real life problems and and the kind of population and the problems we have in India is very unique to us so did you see anything which which might come to India which might be Niche at this point of time but which might which is applicable to the Indian audience
Ravi Kuppuraj: Yeah absolutely I mean you typically see a lot of early innovation technology at CES which probably will even come to the mainstream in the rest of the world a year or two from from now right but that's said I think there we also saw a number of technology and implementation of the technology that are immediately applicable to India I think that speaks more towards a maturation of some of these Technologies of the last few years that were showcased but also the fact that India has made some leaf frogs in terms of digital adoption right so several of that in terms of connectivity we saw a lot more of 4G devices that were becoming very cost effective in all kinds of things so really the connectivity angle I see that getting to India very quickly
Ravi Kuppuraj: Digital Health we saw several things that those are things that can be adopted to India right away and you know we had the opportunity to meet a lot of our vendor partners as well who are bringing their Technologies which we are integrating as we speak these are in the areas of sensors algorithms AI so on and so forth even design so one one of the things that we had was we had our head of design for smart also come there with a very unique perspective of looking at things it's not just pure technology for technology's sake but how does it really apply to the usage of something from a user perspective right be it the physical design of the objects to the ux interface and really how can that become more customer Centric so a lot of applicable things so it's not just kind of a science fiction movie anymore I think it's a lot more kind of grounded real very applicable in Germany to India
Adithya Raj: So Ravi we saw a lot of companies exhibiting their technological things so
Innovation what's happening in the world so when do you think Titan can have its own massive booth in CES
Ravi Kuppuraj: Hey why not next year that's said I I think clearly that's one of our dream and vision and I don't think it's it's really that going to be that far frankly if you look at things that we are doing today I mean you saw that the industry we are in this is the place to be the things that we are doing beginning with Titan life for example where we've got a world class quality management system kind of set up and we'll be ready to have products that can be like CE, MAR and word standard Etc so the day is not for when Titan will not just be going to see us to look at things but actually to Showcase things so we're not far from that and that's truly a future that we are driving towards so it won't I'm hoping it won't be too far and hoping we can do that together soon adithya
Adithya Raj:100% Ravi excited and hopeful that very soon Titan will be part of CES and thank you for being part of the chatter box where you have shared your insights about CES
Ravi Kuppuraj: Wonderful likewise great great great talk talking to you on the Titan podcast today and share my perspectives our perspectives Fresh Off from CES thank you
