Amit Kaushal, General Manager, Honeywell Building Technologies, India
Honeywell, which is known for making great voice evacuations, has recently entered the professional audio market. What is the reason or thought process behind this new venture?
Honeywell is a global leader offering cutting-edge innovation, superior quality and uncompromising safety. No matter what you are looking for, extraordinary sound performance, easy installation, maintenance, cost effectiveness, or an aesthetic design, Honeywell caters to all your needs.
An extension of the Honeywell Public Address and Voice Alarm (PAVA) solutions, known for its intelligibility and durability, Honeywell ProSound speakers will enable the company to offer solutions to new verticals like hotels, malls, multiplexes, amphitheaters, clubs, educational institutions, and auditoriums. With the launch of this category, Honeywell becomes a complete audio solutions provider with an attractive combination of products, meeting internationally recognized industry standards that ensures superior sound, appealing design, reliability and excellent performance.
Today, there are too many pro-sound speaker manufacturers to count. How do you expect to succeed in this business, given all the competition? And how will Honeywell remain relevant in the pro-sound speaker business going forward?
It’s true that there are exciting players. At Honeywell, we pride ourselves on our customer intimacy, channel reach and quality of products that we launch. Our ProSound portfolio is receiving great response. Some of the products have already been implemented at some of the leading clubs, educational and commercial establishments in India. We are confident that the speaker range will prove to be a premium offering for our discerning customers and its cutting-edge innovation, superior quality, uncompromising safety, and extraordinary sound performance, will resonate well with the industry. The Honeywell Building Technologies team will also give expert engineering support to our partners for large projects to ensure that it differentiates itself from competition.
Honeywell quality is well understood across the world. How do you propose to maintain that quality in the pro-sound speaker business? Tell us a little about Honeywell’s R&D process for the pro-sound speakers and a little about the production facility?
Honeywell PAVA solutions have been designed to meet the internationally recognized industry standards that ensure high reliability and excellent performance even in extreme conditions. Built with the same DNA as Honeywell Voice Evacuation solutions, we plan to bring forth the same world-renowned quality and technology to India with the ProSound category as well.
The Honeywell engineers use state of the art techniques, measurement systems, and use high quality components to ensure that the products released sound pristine. The Honeywell 5 stage NPI process is a market forward – technology-backed approach where the acoustic engineers look at the latest technology and take feedback from market trends to bring out the best in class products. Our production facility is equipped with the best CNC machines, acoustic testing labs, anechoic chambers, and measurement systems.
What has been your approach to designing the new speaker systems and how much would you say that these speakers employ “state-of-the art design”?
Honeywell PAVA range is a perfect combination of appealing design, superior sound reproduction, and easy installation. Wherever sound acts as a major intermediary to spreading information, Honeywell’s speakers provide operational efficiency and a secure environment. All speakers are 100v with inbuilt LMT to match industrial standards.
An extension of the PAVA solutions, the Honeywell ProSound speakers are specially crafted to cater to verticals namely: hospitality, sports complexes, performance venues, clubs, amphitheaters, and auditoriums.
The Honeywell ProSound speakers are all active speakers, with built in high quality amplification. The portfolio also caters to the mass-mid segment as well as the premium segment with its high directivity line arrays. Most of the products are plug and play and focuses on premium quality audio.
Furthermore, all the three categories of the ProSound range are designed keeping in mind specific requirements such as:
- Honeywell ProZeta – this range is capable of providing a high volume of sound in easy-to-transport and set-up models, and is suitable for DJs and travelling musicians
- Honeywell ProAlpha - this range comprises of high-definition speakers ideal for touring and installation purposes, inbuilt with high-quality amplification. It comes in reliable high-quality wooden cabinets with built-in DSP for HD sound with multiple presets available for any application
- Honeywell ProZoe – this range comes with unparalleled sound quality with premium active line array technology. It is available in versatile cabinets, designed to suit indoors or outdoors requirements. The ProZoe range comes with a 32-bit DSP processor and a software to maximize the built-in DSP engine
In India, in which segment (fixed install, rental etc.) do you see most potential for the new pro-sound speakers and how do you plan to infiltrate those segments?
Honeywell Building Technologies will operate through two distinct channels. One, through authorized partners, where customers require high level of engineering and technical expertise and the other is the small medium business distributor channel, where plug-and-play products can be sold directly to consumers.
At the same time, we also understand that there is a big rental market in the country, especially around big seasonal events such as Ganesh Chaturthi, Durga Pooja, Diwali season, wedding season, etc. These events also require quality DJs and speakers, which these companies mainly acquire by renting the hardware through distributors. For this category, we are working with different channel partners who will be able to target this market as well.
If you have to name one single component most responsible for sound clarity in ProZeta, ProAlpha and ProZoe what would it be?
For Pro-Zeta, we have ensured that the cabinet design would enable better sound quality though its made of ABS. Likewise in the Pro-Alpha series, the high quality neodymium customized drivers will make the difference as far as sonic performance is concered. As far as ProZoe series is concerned, the built in 32bit DSP coupled with optimized presets will ensure high directivity in various settings.
Honeywell pro-sound systems – rather expensive or quite affordable? What would be the price range in INR?
The price point of the Honeywell ProSound speakers will be very attractive. The end user and the system integrator will find the products to be a value for money. The cost will vary depending on the size of the facility and the usage requirement.
What are the company’s short and long-term goals for the India market with respect to the pro-sound segment?
Since the launch of ProSound speakers is an India-led initiative, our primary and short-term goal is to introduce the product range to the relevant audience and deploy proper channels through which we can service them in the long-run. The initial feedback we have received from the market and through our partners is very promising. It is encouraging us to think beyond and plan ahead. Our long-term goal is to carve a market share for the product category, backed by Honeywell’s global legacy of customer trust, superior quality, and technology. We want to optimize our resources in-country including local sales, local marketing, local technical support and manufacturing facilities in order to create more relevant products for our Indian and global audiences.