Case Studies

How Hyderabad became the most digitally secured city

India has always been a victim of crime. In 2019 alone, more than 5 million cognizable crimes were committed across the country. Yet, location plays a key role and has a significant impact on crime in this country. While much of the crime is generally non-violent, India does experience a full range of criminal activity. Crimes are most common particularly on trains, buses, and crowded streets, which means that some areas have a higher risk. Nonetheless, criminal acts can occur at any place.

Since its inception, CP PLUS has been striving to make the country safer and smarter to fight vigorously against criminal behavior in the country. In 2013, the state Police installed 5000 advanced CCTV cameras. At the same time, the state’s Public Safety Act came into being which mandated that any establishment where over 100 people may gather would have to install CCTV surveillance cameras and provide access to the footage to the local authorities.

As the city of Hyderabad decided to move towards better and easier surveillance to reduce criminal activity, CP PLUS came forward to enable both the authorities and the public with not just installing CCTV cameras throughout the city but also with the integration of the AI-based safe city solution.

Over the last few years, CP PLUS has been diligently working with various organizations to take the newly founded state of Telangana to unprecedented levels of security in India. The initiative started with Hyderabad Traffic Police as a Senior Inspector of Telangana Traffic Police says, ‘We have been using CP PLUS surveillance cameras for several years. These cameras have been an integral part of traffic management as well as traffic enforcement for us. The assistance that this surveillance solution provides is quite noteworthy. Our shift to the leading Indian brand has resulted in a greater availability of effective surveillance technology after the Make-in-India initiative was reiterated by CP PLUS. The working pattern has improved several folds in the past 5 years.’

‘We are even able to monitor and control the city and even issue tickets from our control room with the help of these CP PLUS surveillance cameras that have been integrated with the automatic number plate recognition technology. We have noticed that the violation pattern of our citizens has gone down due to this’. This meant that cameras slowly started filling the city of Hyderabad over the last few years, bringing the total city-wide count to more than 580,000 cameras. Hyderabad was recently named as the city with the most number of CCTV cameras in India, and the 16th most surveilled city in the world, according to a July 2020 report by UK-based tech firm Comparitech.

To make the city absolutely safe for the public, Hyderabad Police also procured CP PLUS body-worn cameras. Now that every officer wears a highly useful body-worn camera while on duty, the way public behaves has been changed and the assault cases have seen a great downfall.

As it became evident that a smart surveillance solution can help increase the sense of security, the city police recently announced that the number of CCTVs in Hyderabad will be doubled to 1 million. This has resulted in Telangana leading the way in using tech to keep its citizens safe.

Over the years, the Telangana government as well as other major organizations and institutions have become responsible for deploying different kinds of technologies to expand surveillance across the state. This has led to a proliferation of CCTV cameras, AI-based solutions, facial recognition, and many more such helpful technologies that have been provided by CP PLUS to help in keeping each citizen safe.

Hyderabad racecourse was one place in a dire need of an effective surveillance solution to minimize activities relating to crime and vandalism. A Senior Officer of Hyderabad Race Club says, ‘At the racecourse, we have a need to oversee all activities quite closely, especially when functions and social events are conducted. And from the security perspective, we felt that we required high-end cameras, and then when we looked for brands that have the technology and that specialize in delivering customized solutions across India. Finally, we realized that the nation’s brand has outdone others in the surveillance and security industry. Our relationship since then has been highly beneficial, we have improved our administrative control over the functioning of many of our activities in the race club. And much of this credit goes to the surveillance solution that CP PLUS installed here at the race club. This local Indian brand is performing very efficiently and at a very reasonable price rate, it achieves the best results.’

Banks in Hyderabad have shifted to a solution that ensures their safety in all aspects as they have been collaborating with CP PLUS for over a decade now and apart from our core segment, the banking industry, we serve a number of others. They have assisted many national banks like State Bank of India, Andhra Bank among others in securing their banks and offices in over 3000 locations across the country. The product portfolio of CP PLUS has proven to be quite wide-ranging. CP PLUS is also associated with Hyderabad City Police for the implementation of public safety measures and have deployed IP-based technology. Hyderabad City Police has shown great satisfaction after using CP PLUS solutions for keeping the city safe. They have also successfully secured numerous educational institutes in the state of Telangana where thousands of cameras effectively cover hundreds of schools and universities in the entire Telangana state.’

‘A lot of data is being generated through the feeds of the CCTV cameras which can be made useful using AI’, says a Senior IT Official of Telangana. ‘Images are matched with offenders and criminals through the master server. There is exceptional monitoring. Through facial recognition, a match is made.’

The upmarket locality of Banjara Hills in Hyderabad houses the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party office, a white building with a board splashed in pink representing the party color. It’s probably the most important building in that neighborhood. Another one is coming up right next to it: a new police headquarters. The state-of-the-art twin tower which will double up as an integrated command and control center is planned to be up and running by the end of the year.

The 18 and 24-storeyed twin towers spread across seven acres and worth ₹300 crores are going to support the vast network of CCTV cameras dotted across the city and state. It will have a “giant video wall” which will show live footage from the cameras on-ground. One could say that it will house one of the largest surveillance systems in the country.

Senior Officer of Telangana Police Department comments, ‘In today’s world, the types of threats are rising in various directions, it is becoming difficult to maintain the same level of livability for every inhabitant. The high-definition technology of CCTV surveillance systems is becoming increasingly imperative in the creation of a safe city and protecting our localities. In Telangana, when we wanted to adopt the new digital surveillance technologies to improve our safety and security, we approached CP PLUS. The brand has helped us since our initial stages and now we have reached such a level of security and quick responses in real-time that other states are replicating our Telangana’s model and are following in the footsteps. CP PLUS has closely worked with us in order to strategize how to cover the entire city. After that, the whole process has brought about a lot of transparency as we have been able to detect and resolve incidents quite efficiently.’