In an era where cities are being flooded with data but starved of actionable insight, the real challenge of “smartness” lies in turning information into timely decisions. From crime investigation to festival policing and traffic management, Indian cities are increasingly leaning on AI to bridge this gap.
In this interview, Vikram Gupta, Founder and CEO of Awiros, explains how Video AI is quietly becoming the operational backbone of Safe City and Smart City initiatives. Drawing on real-world deployments—most notably the impact of AI in the Bengaluru Safe City Project— Vikram offers a grounded view of how AI is moving city governance from manual monitoring to proactive, intelligence-led operations, and why this shift matters for public safety, law enforcement, and urban resilience.
Some edited excerpts from an interview:
To start with, could you explain the role that Awiros plays in safe city initiatives, particularly in public safety and traffic management?
Awiros is a Video AI platform designed to help cities make sense of the massive amount of visual data they generate every day. Cities have thousands of cameras and sensors, yet most of that information is underutilised. Our platform turns this raw video into real-time, actionable intelligence.
In public safety, this means faster detection of incidents, better situational awareness, and quicker
response. In traffic operations, AI helps monitor situations, identify violations, and optimise the deployment of personnel. Administratively, it gives city authorities a unified view of operations, enabling data-led decisions rather than reactive interventions. The goal is simple: helping cities move from manual monitoring to intelligent, automated, and proactive management.
Our Video AI platform is built to run across entire cities, managing tens of thousands of cameras and multiple AI applications at once. It is designed as an open architecture where authorities can plug in new applications, integrate third-party AI, or extend functionality as their needs evolve.
Most importantly, our experience comes from being deeply embedded with police forces, traffic departments, and emergency teams. We don’t just supply technology—we understand operational workflows, constraints, and real-world environments. That alignment between technology and ground operations is what makes deployments successful.
Many newspapers recently reported how the Bengaluru Safe City Project played a key role in detecting inter-state crimes. What were the AI capabilities behind that impact?
The Bengaluru Safe City deployment is one of the strongest examples of real-world AI impact. With thousands of cameras across the city, the challenge for any police force is extracting relevant evidence quickly. Our Video AI platform allows investigators to run rapid video searches, identify patterns of movement, match visual cues, and trace suspects across multiple locations.
What traditionally took days of manual scanning now takes hours. The fact that the police could link movements and identify important leads so quickly shows how AI can fundamentally accelerate investigation workflows. It is a powerful demonstration of how technology can support law enforcement.
Another news article highlighted how Bengaluru Police used an AI-powered system to manage firecracker violations during Deepavali. How did that work?
Deepavali brings unique enforcement challenges because of crowds, noise, and widespread fireworks. The police wanted a precise way to monitor activity after the 10 pm deadline. To support them, we implemented an advanced detection system within the Video AI platform that could identify firecracker bursts, determine their location, and send instant alerts to the command center.
This allowed enforcement teams to act immediately rather than rely solely on patrols or citizen complaints. According to the police, this contributed to a significant reduction in late-night violations. It is a great example of how AI can address very specific operational challenges that cities face year after year.
Beyond crime and festival monitoring, how is AI reshaping broader city operations like traffic, mobility, and administration?
Traffic is one of the most dynamic and complex challenges for any city. Our Video AI platform supports authorities by continuously analysing intersections, identifying violations, monitoring congestion patterns, and signalling when incidents require attention. This helps teams prioritise their time and deploy personnel more effectively.
On the administrative side, AI helps create consistency and transparency. When incidents are detected automatically, when alerts and workflows are integrated, and when decision-makers can see real-time city data on a single system, governance becomes faster and more predictable. Over time, this builds a culture of evidence-based administration, where decisions are rooted in data rather than assumptions.
Looking ahead, how do you see AI shaping the future of safe and smart cities?
We are at the beginning of a major transition. AI will move cities from reactive response to predictive and eventually prescriptive intelligence. With richer data, multimodal inputs, and continuous learning, systems will be able to forecast where incidents are likely to occur, identify vulnerable zones, and recommend actions before problems escalate.
Our focus at Awiros is to build these capabilities into the Video AI platform—integrating audio, video, and sensor streams, creating digital twins of city environments, and enabling authorities to simulate and plan interventions in advance. As cities modernise, AI will become the operational nervous system that keeps them efficient, safe, and resilient.
A final question — when you see news stories highlighting how AI helped solve cases or manage city events better, what does that mean to you personally as a founder?
For me, that is the true measure of why we built this company. We always believed technology should have a tangible impact on the real world. When police teams say the platform helped close a case faster or deliver a safer environment, it means the technology is serving its purpose. It reinforces that AI is not just innovation for its own sake but a tool that improves lives, strengthens institutions, and supports the people responsible for keeping our cities safe.