Turning CCTV cameras into smart sensors — Why we backed Fyma
Change Ventures led Fyma’s €1.5M seed round in late 2020, joined by 7 Percent, Decacorn, Lemonade Stand, Tiny VC, existing investor Superangel and several angel investors. It’s time to reflect what led us to join the forces with powerful founder duo Karen and Taavi in their quest to make CCTV cameras smarter.
Let’s rewind the tape a bit. Did you know that the earliest CCTV camera was developed in Russia as early as 1927? The mechanical camera system consisted of a manually-operated scanning-transmitting camera and wireless shortwave transmitter and receiver, with a resolution of a hundred lines. Its application — monitoring the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin for approaching visitors, obviously.
The CCTV technology has since seen some gradual upgrades while piggybacking on other innovations. But on a grand scale, most camera operators still “run blind”. Their cameras mainly produce mass of dumb data. Nearly all of it will go unused. And if one does need to review the recordings, the experience is cumbersome at best. It’s as if the Camera operators simply lack a cost-effective way to make sense of this data. What a waste! There are over 1 million cameras installed globally. World literally drowns in CCTV cameras. Covid19 will further boost camera adoption.
But could the cameras be made smarter? What if you could run camera feeds through an AI to turn dumb video feeds into useful information? Could you do it without having to buy expensive specialty camera systems? Could you do all that without sacrificing civil liberties? Yes you could — Fyma to the rescue!
Fyma has come up with a clever AI solution that turns existing CCTV camera video feeds into actionable business intelligence. It takes only a few clicks to set it up. No need to hire data science PhDs to run it. Automation takes care of the rest. And the best part — it’s GDPR compliant and does the job without compromising privacy.
The potential applications are virtually limitless. Almost every industry uses cameras in some way. Almost every industry is also turning digital to some extent. Digital businesses rely on measuring every aspect of their operations. Anything from customer journey to efficiency of their back-end services. With Fyma, it’s now possible for businesses operating with physical infrastructure to enjoy similar analytics capabilities.
Fyma is off to a great start. They’re working with airports, parking operators, retail space managers, security companies and many others to equip their cameras with smart capabilities, such as wayfinding, predictive analytics, occupancy measurement, proximity analysis, parking management. The list goes on.
Got cameras that run blind? Be sure to get in touch with Fyma team.
