Swapnil Jadhav | Founder | Hardcastle GIS Solutions
Most of us have a dream job. A job that pays well, gives exciting opportunities every day, provides job security, and guarantees a stable lifestyle. But, how many of us actually land up with such a job? Chances of settling down with a routine job and making a few compromises are higher than we think or like. However, a few refuse to settle down with anything less than what they want and set out on an entrepreneurial venture to realise their dreams.
Swapnil Jadhav, a go-getter, didn’t want to be a part of the regular technology industry and was looking for something challenging in personal career. While doing research for his career options, he stumbled upon Geoinformatics and GIS Solutions. It was an upcoming technology which held the key to the future where locations will be playing a key element around everything. This led him to establish his venture – Hardcastle GIS Solutions. The name Hardcastle, which means impregnable fortress or stronghold in the domain, reflects the fact that all the initial hire in the company were domain expert. Founding Hardcastle helped him in addressing the problems of society.
Gaining Momentum with Each Client
Hardcastle GIS Solutions is a GIS-focused Software Development company providing solutions such as GIS, Software Development, Data Analytics, Mobile App Development, etc. It also participates in Global RFP directly, Joint-Venture/Consortium as or sub-contractors. It works as a Geospatial Software company enabling digital transformation for client companies using its geospatial solution at its core. It delivers cutting-edge web, mobile, and geospatial solutions while keeping client goals as its top priority.
Over the ages, the company’s projects with various clients have contributed towards society through its solution and also benefitted clients because of Hardcastle’s:
- Global Experience Responsive team with technical and communications skills.
- Exceptional Ongoing customer services which go out of the way to service the customer
- Development Strategies that are tailored to each client.
Efficient Technology-based Solutions
Hardcastle has a gamut of products and services that cater to different client needs including:
- GIS Data Collector
- A GIS-Based Smart City Site Plan/Plot Owner Plan Generation.
- Single Window Building Permission System
- GIS-Based City Centric Dashboard
- GIS Mapping
- GIS Consultation for Smart City
- Data Analytics
- Software & Mobile App Development
- IOT Development
These solutions are based on latest and core technologies like:
- Cloud Computing — It offers organizations, ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency. Privacy and security concerns have been voiced, but many cities have experimented with private cloud services and a public/private hybrid infrastructure.
- Big Data and Data Analytics — Trends such as IoT, Open Data, etc. mean that cities are increasingly collecting and making available significant amounts of data. This high volume data or Big Data is often real-time and extremely varying in its sources, formats, and characteristic.
- Open Data — In the context of Smart Cities, this refers to public policy that requires or encourages public agencies and private companies to release data sets and make them freely accessible. This data can cover a number of areas: from energy-usage to crime statistics, to city service levels, to infrastructure data etc.
Creating Smart Cities with Citizen Engagement
In creating Smart Cities, Hardcastle is trying to be as closely attached to Smart City Initiatives by the Government of India. It has done some implementation for smart cities and is trying to replicate in other smart cities.Smart City Initiatives are a definite help in increasing technology importance and awareness bringing more business for the company.
But the key to developing such cities is Citizen Engagement. It is an important aspect of many of the smart city technology trends – particularly open-data, IoT, and big data. It is a movement towards capitalizing on technology as a tool for greater engagement with citizens. It also is closely related to leveraging the “collective intelligence” of cities and communities in order to understand better what citizens need in their daily lives. To increase awareness amongst citizens, Hardcastle plans to host a few seminars and meet up events where it invites the stakeholders of smart cities and citizens to underline the fact as to how it can benefit the city.
Advising the Young
Swapnil has a lot to share with young entrepreneurs as he would like them to learn from his story of success and a few mistakes:
- Don’t wait for perfect! When starting a new business, we have learned that there is only so much you can predict with the information you have. The only way to really know if something is going to work is by testing it in a quick and scrappy way
- “No entrepreneur or business owner has all of the answers, but if you’re calculated, hardworking, and seek good advice, you’ll figure out how to achieve the bigger goals.
- “There are a lot of problems to solve when building a business that can distract you from delivering real value to your users. You should wake up thinking about your end user and go to bed thinking about your end user.”
- Lastly its “High-Risk High Gains”.
Looking Forward
Through its Global Offices, Hardcastle plans to get the best smart city initiatives from the globe to be implemented in India through a collaborative effort. It also plans to tie-up with local government to build products which would deliver citizen-centric services at low cost to citizens and reduce the current delivery time.
