How Indian control rooms are evolving and maturing

• Features

• 11/08/2026

India is a maturing market that refuses to slow down. Investment is flowing in both from government sources and private industry, as the country sees an uptick in funding for smart cities, defence, public-safety infrastructure, and national corporations that fuel demand for smarter, more sophisticated control rooms. The market growth of the control room sector in India is estimated to reach USD 4.6 billion by 2034, according to the IMARC Group, reflecting the huge uptick in investment and growth as the need for more sophisticated monitoring grows.

This investment isn’t just going towards bigger and brighter visuals, but on creating environments that offer greater control and monitoring with minimal downtime and disruption for operators.

In today’s control room environment, it’s not all about the LED. Though the screen plays an undeniably central role in control room operation, today’s control room experience is instead becoming increasingly centred on the operator in an environment, a work area that is not only secure, but software-defined and increasingly networked.

Control rooms in India can be divided into several categories due to the diverse portfolio of government-funded projects (airports, oil and gas companies, state ministries) as well as high-end corporate clients and private installations. These control rooms see differing requirements and competition. Government projects prioritise Indian-made manufacturers with a ban on Chinese manufacturers, while the private sector enjoys greater flexibility in its use of products. Despite this, some aspects remain key for all control room projects: security, redundancy, and ease of use for operators.

Andy Lee, senior international sales manager, Datapath, explains: “We are seeing a strong diversity in control room projects. We see both ‘traditional’ control room environments and more data-centric environments that show dashboards and company data, as well as a combination of the two in corporate environments. We’ve delivered installations across India in data centres, corporates, airports, and more.”

Datapath has strengthened its position in the Indian market by delivering the flexibility that this diverse market needs, incorporating a central command and control feature set as well as more advanced AVoIP and KVM offerings under one software interface, easing the learning curve for control room operators and increasing reaction times by incorporating all functionality under one offering. This streamlined offering can allow control room environments to scale as projects enlarge over time, keeping disruption to a minimum.

Andy continues: “We’re bringing in lots of different hardware options depending on project setups such as a traditional videowall with a reliable software controller. If it is critical infrastructure, you could have that in a redundant setup, it’s all available through our own software. You can also add receivers for AVoIP functionality with KVM, which is something we didn’t have before. We can bring all these pieces under the umbrella of one software interface which makes the experience user friendly from a systems integrator’s and end user’s point of view.”

While videowalls have formed the centrepiece of control room environments, it’s simply not enough to specify just pixel pitch and brightness. Today’s control room specifications go far beyond that: source management, latency and redundancy have become fundamental to the specification process, as clients juggle more data than ever before.

Rishubh Nayar, director, Christie Digital Systems India, explains: “For actual monitoring purposes, the discussion for the client really starts with sources, the number of inputs they want to be displaying, and the types of inputs that they want to be showcasing on the videowall. “You also need to consider whether you need these inputs to be over IP and whether the client requires a PC- or server-based controller. These discussions depend on having a clear understanding of the users’ requirements. A lot of corporates like Wells Fargo don’t just allow any product to be installed, you need to pass through their validation tests. The products need to be compliant to the cybersecurity standards of different organisations.”

Secure from the start

Cybersecurity considerations have rocketed to the top of the list of client concerns, as the threat of corporate espionage and AI hacking becomes prominent. Today’s control room products must not only conform to security standards and encryption requirements but remain in a constant arms race against cybersecurity exploits.

Andy continues: “A lot of the development now is done from the ground up with cybersecurity in mind. Control rooms require certain standards and AES encryption in there. We’ve worked on certification with cybersecurity experts and we’re also looking at further ways to improve this. If there is a certification that we might be missing or we need to look at for the future, then that’s very much a focus of Datapath.

“It’s one thing to have a decent KVM or AV-over-IP solution that fits the bill, but if it’s not secure, you don’t really have a system. You have an open door. We have a lot of clients, especially in defence, who have been very reluctant to move away from traditional capture-card setups, focussing on systems that are completely separate from networked sources. “Now that networked control rooms are becoming more common in India, Datapath is maintaining a big focus on security, while we develop our solutions further, supporting the clients as they incorporate this peace of mind into their deployments.”

Rishubh believes that a regional approach is required to meet the diverse needs and requirements of each client, providing a bespoke offering that is tailored to client specifications: “Clients are coming up with their own compliance requirements which need to be considered when it comes to networked operating centres. We have a ‘Make in India’ offering today which gives us access to the homegrown, government market and we believe in a regionalised approach to meet specific compliances and local laws. That’s something we are open to as a brand.”

Clients today are also demanding scalability. As control rooms cater to rapidly expanding facilities, offering a scalable solution is key to ensuring a system remains fit for purpose. Andy says: “We’ve been working in this market in India for a long time, and we’ve sold multiple systems where, in the past, the control room environment would have operated as a separate system. You could add a capture card or a graphics card to increase either the inputs or the outputs, but in terms of a truly scalable solution, it’s the development of Aetria that gives us that. “Aetria allows us to add additional videowall processors. If you’re monitoring a campus and want to add another building, or if you’re managing a large corporate setup and want to add another floor with multiple rooms, you can add transmitters to bring in more sources, as well as additional operator workstations or KVM stations. Because it’s centrally managed, it gives us the ability to scale over time, which is a powerful tool for us.”

Redundancy is king 

In a 24/7 control room environment, redundancy is no longer optional. Many clients today require a system that experiences zero downtime, meaning a solution must be more than secure, it has to be failproof.
Firdosh Balsara, regional senior business director South Asia, Planar, explains: “Besides the normal specs, which is the pixel pitch and the videowall size, companies want absolutely zero downtime. Clients want everything to be redundant: power, signal, redundancy in the controller, any place where the control room is operating 24/7 requires a redundant design.

“We at Planar launched the Cobra series which features proprietary EverPixel architecture with pixel-level redundancy. This eliminates the potential for visible dead pixels , with two of each (red, green, and blue) LED pixels, so every RGB pixel has a backup.”

Christie has launched its XP series LED platform, offering a 10 year warranty and redundancy features built-in, combining redundancy and quality-of-life features for operators. Rishubh
explains: “You can reduce the brightness on the XP, and the colour saturation is not affected at all which is critical for control room applications. You cannot look at a videowall at 600 nits for 24 hours a day. It becomes tiring on the eyes. If you reduce the brightness, you extend the lifetime of the display, all without affecting the colour saturation. We also have options to have the power supply N+1 redundant,
and the controllers can be daisychained and made redundant as well, so we have built redundancy in at every level."

Comfort for operators has also become key to quality control room work, be it the brightness of a display or even the comfort of a space, these considerations go beyond the standard considerations that control
rooms have been known for. Firdosh continues: “Ergonomics plays a very important role, and people do take care of the seating arrangement and the viewing distances, the comfort level has become very important. “We have partnered with ergonomics specialist, OnePWS (formerly Pyrotech Workspace Solutions), a company that delivers control room and control desk solutions. We present a joint proposal to the customer combining the display with the right control room desk solutions and that has increased our chances of winning bids.”

The advent of AI monitoring is making a profound difference in the control room market, as many environments rely on the technology for effective monitoring without the risk of human error in 24/7 applications. Jey Wang, CEO, Planar International, explains: “We are using AI technology to automatically test the environmental brightness and automatically change the LED screen brightness to suit the environment’s brightness. This technology is maturing and we can use AI technology embedded in our controller system to monitor each frame of video. We’re also seeing the convergence of IoT, AI, and drone technologies coming together to gather data, and this is something we’ll be seeing more of in control room environments.”

 For Christie, keeping the entire solution in mind is as important as anything else when considering the future development of control rooms. Rishubh closes: “As an OEM today, we need to be up to date when it comes to having redundancy built in. Control rooms are all about no downtime, and Christie has been operating in this market for more than 20 years. Beyond the video systems, we have always invested in the
back end. It’s not just about the video system anymore. We’ll continue to invest in a large range of processing solutions because we understand that it’s never been about just the videowall, LCD panel, or projection system. It’s about the back end as well.”