Interview: Dmitry Danilchenko, Owner, Partizan Security
Mr Danilchenko, thank you for sparing your time to address to our readers. Could you present yourself, your educational and professional background, when did you start working for Partizan Security, what duties are your performing, etc.?
Hello and thank you so much for that great opportunity. I’m sure it will be an interesting talk and useful for our readers. I started Partizan Security in the year 2008 when the majority of players were still using black and white CCTV cameras. So we saw that potential and introduced color 420tvl cameras to the customers. At that time they were quite expensive and the quality was stunning. Now, of course, it sounds like a joke, but it was only 12 years ago. Technologies of CCTV are changing very fast.
My background was the financial sphere first, then satellite business and then we came to security and CCTV field with the help of our existing customers. Since then I have dedicated myself to the Partizan brand and our international expansion. I’m attending exhibitions, arranging meetings and calls with customers, initiating new products and marketing strategies. Well, together with my team, every day, step by step we are making Partizan brand big and known in every corner of our globe.
Partizan has been doing business in security industry for 12 years now. What were your most important milestones, where do you manufacture and sell your products and solutions, are you pleased with the current position at the market, how many people do you employ, revenue, etc.?
For now i can admit 3 main milestones for us.
2010 when we started to offer network recorders and cameras and hence we start making our own software by creating software R&D team.
2014 we created our own CCTV Cloud, which can connect any camera or recorder without static IP and also can keep your recordings safe in our Cloud servers with high privacy and protection level. By the way it is still one of our main advantages and helping us to perform and gain more users, due to speed and reliability of our p2p connection comparing to other solutions in the market.
2019 we launched our new generation of mobile apps for CCTV and at the end of the 2019 it gain Best Mobile App Excellence Award at Adria exhibition, which was a bit of surprise for us, but still we are very proud that our developments are so highly admited.
By the way, all milestones are related to software and its not an accidentially. Bcz you know, in CCTV business in my opinion 90% of success is your software and 10% is hardware. Finally, every customer is using your app every day and almost never touching your camera 🙂
For now, in 2020 Partizan Security is the company with offices in Prague, Czech republic, where we have HQ and main EU stock, production line and showroom. In Kyiv, Ukraine we have our main R&D center together with marketing, logistics departments and sales team for Ukraine and CIS region, and Dubai, UAE with dedicated sales and technical team for Middle East region. Also we have multiple contract assembly lines in China to produce price aggressive products and we are making it with our full quality and technical control. All together we are team of almost 60 professionals, who are making and selling our products to more than 50 different countries with annual growth 20% and more.
Your company produces equipment and develops software for modern security systems. Could you present your product portfolio and core technologies?
Our main product is CCTV which we producing and selling the most. Then access control, bcz market size for that is much less. And both solutions we are benefit with our award winning aplications, which are bringing completely new experience to our customers. Nowadays there are quite a lot of chinese players with similar apps and software logic, not always simple for european mindset. Also there are old european or US players, which are professional and good, but sometimes too complicated and expensive. Our task is to fill that huge market of small and middle customers who need something simple, reliable and with affordable price. Of course we have many big or even huge projects, but our main flesh and blood is installing companies who are making installations every day and working with home and business owners, well, regular people like you and me actually
If you can select one, what would be your flagship product or product series and why?
Now its Starlight 5Mp series of our IP cameras. Why? Because for its price it can bring to any customer 150% of performance, quality and efficiency. It deliver nice colour image even in very low light conditions and resolution is good enough to have pretty much detailed images 24/7. Together with our NVRs these cameras can be smart and react only according to some presetted scenarios. For example – only if there is a human in the scene or if anyone crossing the virtual line and so on.
As you said, Partizan offers AHD. Is your equipment designed to fit third party components? And are your products ONVIF compliant?
Yes, we are trying to be as open as possible. I do belive that integration to the existing systems is same important as to aquire some new projects. Thats why all our analog recorders and cameras are hybrid – they can support AHD-CVI-TVI protocols made by our competitors. Same situation with IP systems. Partizan Security is official member of Onvif since many years and we are fully compliant with this protocol of course. So having any third party system or VMS with support of relevant version of Onvif protocol you can be sure that it will work with us without problems.
For home users you have special offer – Wi-FI Kits and DIY Cloud cameras. Tell us more about them?
Yes, this is a small part of our business actually, bcz Partizan is trade only brand and we are not working with end customers directly. But many of our customers are working with retail chains or directly with end users by the box moving model. So they are asking from us some simple and reliable products which end customer can manage to install and launch themselves if they cant afford professional installation. So for that puropose we producing wifi series of our cameras and kits, including even cameras with 4G support. So you can use them in remote areas without landline internet or wifi.
You market Partizan Cloud as the world’s first complex solution for cloud storage of video backup straight from the cameras manufacturer. What are the benefits of that for users?
First of all users wont have any hassle with integration of hardware and software bcz they are created to work together. Second benefit is that we are manufacturing both parts, so can make user experience as easy as it is possible. For example you can add Partizan camera to the cloud within 2 minutes if not faster just by scanning QR code or running Wireless Connect wizard. Then user can pay for Cloud storage 7 days and more straight from the app, or he can stay with live video stream which is free of charge. Knowing some existing cloud solutions in the market, they are always have some limitations with third party cameras, like not all firmwares supported, not all models, not all functions, some times you have to buy additional equipment to make it running and so on. Partizan Cloud and Partizan Cloud cameras is much more simple for anyone.
An increasing security concerns are related to cyber attacks. How secure are your products from data theft?
Well, if majority of CCTV customers are still keeping default passwords, we can do the most protected system in the world, but they will be still in a big risk for sure. From our side we do all what we can in this regards. We are closing all unnecessary ports and protocols, which hackers are normally using to connect to your device, we are GDPR compliant and using only GDPR compliant data centers to store our Cloud and other data. I can not say we are NASA grade protected, but definitely we dont have any unexpected and hidden „super-access“ to each our camera, which majority of chinese suppliers have according to the latest CCTV privacy scandals in the US and not only. Also each our camera sending data only to our servers and in case of highly secured objects you can easily switch all our protocols off to make sure your camera is 100% safe and not sending any data to external sources. In this case your cameras will be recording to the local recorder and all you secrets will be with you. Of course if you will not forget to change your password
What vertical markets does Partizan focuses on? And could you present some of the most important case studies in Europe?
As i said, our final customer is installer and installation company. So our philosophy is to make them happy with our products. It should be easy and nice to install for installers and simple to use by end users. That is the main key in my opinion.
Partizan security systems was installed in many places within these years. Mostly it was small and middle businesses along with residential and government projects. But we are proud to be main CCTV system for Carlsberg new construction site in Denmark, for Tesla showrooms in Czech republic, for National Bank and Government of Macedonia, for biggest EU retail chain stores like Spar, Tesco, Leroy Merlin, Mobelix etc.
Corona virus pandemic has affected the entire world. Security industry and market are no exception. How did it affected your company, what changes did you have to make? Did you offer some new solutions or products or do you intend to?
Yes, for many players and businesses 2020 is very complicated year. But not for us. In this year we are showing significant growth, much bigger than 2019 for example. Bcz people have more time to look for something new and promising while sitting at home. Some of them are trying to support local european manufacturers, which is also helping us a lot. And finally we introduced to the market our new face recognition and temperature measurement device, which became real bestseller straight from the start. It can recognise your face, recognise that you wearing the mask, it can measure your temperature and then if connected to access control system and to the internet it will react accordingly. For example, it will not let you in and will notify responsible person by sound or email or push notification in case if some restricted situation detected (visitor dont have face mask or have high temperature). Many businesses are starting to be concerned about their workers and visitors health, so they more likely to invest money in such a products to make sure someone with high temperature will not come over and infect entire team. Our solution again is a good combo of hardware with precise european temperature sensor and our software, bcz now you can receive push notifications of visitors without mask or with abnormal temperature straight to your email or messenger for example. Soon we will release our new version of mobile app and you will start receiving push notification to the app about any suspicious event like this. All this makes this system not only useful from the health point of view, but it is helping to manage so many things in easy way! Actually our device can be fully integrated with any access control system and bring an additional protection once you need it. Also its very flexible and customizable, which is good for the customers who want to promote it with their own brand.
Related to that, what will be trends that will definy security market in years ahead of us and what will be your answer to them?
Im sure covid story will bring strong health trend to the security industry. Especially to the access control market. Bcz now it will be high demand for the solutions which can not only identify some person, but also to identify how healty is this person (means how safe for other people). Now its started from the hardware checking – like our solution with temperature sensor, face recognition, mask recognition and access control according to that. But im sure very soon it will be big demand for the contactless video analytics of peoples behavior, movement and so on to create some outbreak maps, rules, distinguish sources and spreading of epidemy and so on. So, like i said, i do believe security systems have very big future and very huge role in that game of crime prevention along with health problems prevention.
Your opinion on Adriatic region security market? What are your plans for this area, are you looking for regional partners, how do you plan to expand market share?
Im think Adriatic region is one of the most promising in the whole Europe. Its developing area with huge potential and we want to be there and built our brand as soon as it possible. Its not about the size of the market, its about potential opportunities, which are definitely there and in next 5 years we will see big changes, im sure. We already have good presence in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia. Meanwhile we are actively looking forward to find more partners in other countries and of course with existing partners we still have so many things to do
