As Indian cities grapple with climate stress, digital fragmentation, and the rapid rise of AI, Smart City architectures and IT service models are undergoing a fundamental shift.
In this conversation with Nehal Shah, Whole-Time Director at Allied Digital Services Limited, we delve into how Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCCs) are evolving, why the role of a Master Systems Integrator is more critical than ever, how outcome-based contracts are reshaping infrastructure services, and what it truly took to transform a legacy organisation into an AI-ready enterprise.
Allied Digital pioneered the ‘Safe City’ concept in India, starting with Pune in 2015 and several other smart cities subsequently including Lucknow and Ayodhya. During this period technology evolved to provide solutions that increased the scope of applications for the city. Do you see the emergence of a technology that will have potential for the next big use case?
AI-powered video analytics delivers real-time, actionable intelligence across the city, enabling proactive and preventive responses to emerging situations. For instance, the system can detect unexpected crowd formations at critical junctions and generate early alerts for potential mob violence, allowing authorities to deploy first responders before incidents escalate.
Complementing this capability, on-demand surveillance drones can be rapidly deployed for dynamic scenarios such as religious processions, large public gatherings, and monitoring illegal activities like deforestation in and around the city. As urban skylines continue to grow taller, traditional firefighting methods face significant limitations; this challenge is effectively addressed through the use of specialized firefighting drones capable of operating at any height. These drones also play a vital role in search and rescue (SAR) operations, providing swift situational awareness and access to hard-to-reach areas, thereby significantly enhancing public safety and emergency response outcomes.
What are the challenges faced by the MSI in the ever evolving technology landscape to provide the most appropriate solution to the client?
The rapid advancement of emerging technologies is reshaping market expectations, creating continuous demand for highly specialized and innovative products and solutions. For an MSI, keeping pace with this accelerating change poses a significant challenge, as technologies, customer needs, and competitive landscapes evolve simultaneously.
To remain relevant and future-ready, the MSI must maintain a strong understanding of shifting market trends and make timely investments in the appropriate technologies, supported by ongoing skill enhancement and capability building. Such a forward-looking approach enables sustained competitiveness and ensures the ability to deliver differentiated value in a dynamic technology-driven ecosystem.
For decades, Infrastructure Management Services revolved around the service desk. With Digital Desk, and GenAI, that model appears disrupted. How are contracts changing, and how are CFOs responding?
The traditional ‘tickets and hours’ model is effectively obsolete. With AI-led automation, AIOps, and our Digital Desk platform, we are fundamentally changing how value is delivered and measured.
Clients are increasingly paying for outcomes, assured uptime, faster resolution, predictive maintenance, and superior user experience rather than effort alone. While this initially challenges conventional financial thinking, outcome-based models actually provide greater predictability, reduced operational risk, and stronger long-term value. Once CFOs see the stability and transparency these models deliver, the hesitation quickly gives way to confidence.
You have successfully transformed a legacy, family-run business into a modern digital powerhouse. Looking back, what was the hardest cultural code to rewrite to make Allied Digital AI-ready?
In a four-decade-old organisation, execution excellence was deeply ingrained and rightly so. But being AI-ready required us to move beyond comfort and embrace continuous reinvention.
We had to rewrite the belief that delivery alone defines success. Today, curiosity, data-led decision-making, and automation-first thinking are core to how we operate. Through our ERA philosophy Empowerment, Responsibility, and Accountability we made AI everyone’s responsibility, not just the domain of technologists. The real shift was recognising that humans and intelligent systems must now co-create outcomes.
