Smart city enabler Quantela on Tuesday announced that it has made a strategic investment in Silicon Valley-founded cognitive multimedia analytics company Graymatics.

The all-equity deal would give Quantela a minority shareholding in Graymatics with significant strategic and go-to-market (GTM) alignment, and help build comprehensive capabilities in video analytics into its AI-driven smart solutions for its target markets spanning smart cities, buildings, education campuses, public spaces and commercial establishments.

As for Singapore-based Graymatics, the deal will open doors for it to be a part of global smart city projects through Quantela. The company provides video analytics solutions to different smart cities especially in the east zone of India, and various smart spaces (including buildings, highways, ports, airports, telecom carriers) in Singapore, Indonesia, China, the Philippines, Japan, Korea to enhance safety, security, operational efficiency and customer experience.

Commenting on the investment, Abhijit Shanbag, president and chief executive officer of Graymatics, said, Graymatics is excited to journey with Quantela as we create synergies between our offerings, creating definitive industry-leading solutions for the smart cities space and beyond.”

He further said video-analytics is one of the fastest growing industries and its utility goes beyond security and can easily transcend into a powerful tool to run lives and cities more efficiently.

Quantela over the years hasdeployed its solutions in over 100 cities across the world.

Sridhar Gadi, founder and chairman of Quantela, said it is the right to scale globally by enhancing Quantela’s smart city platforms which have real-time data analytics capabilities, with the power of video analytics to deliver more meaningful and measurable outcomes for city administrators and citizens.

Commenting on the partnership he said it will accelerate Quantela’s journey to improve the livability of cities and quality of life.

Adding further, Amr Salem, CEO, Quantela, said, “Our investment in Graymatics will give Quantela the competitive edge to tap into opportunities to enhance public safety by tracking suspicious behavior and abandoned objects; improve traffic flow and crowd management; help detect traffic violations through number plate recognition and also identify littering patterns for better waste management.”

The company in India has partnered with the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) to set up the first-of-its-kind India urban observatory in March 2019 to leverage data analytics for optimizing city operations, improving governance and enhancing economic performance of cities across the country.