Embassy Group, a real estate developer based in Bangalore, India, has announced a partnership with Amazon, to bring Echo devices pre-installed in 800 new homes in four years.
Embassy Group, a real estate developer based in Bangalore, India, has announced a partnership with Amazon, to bring Echo devices pre-installed in 800 new homes in four years.
It’s the first project of its kind, a collaboration between homebuilders and voice control service providers, in India.
In order to attract millennial (ages 20 to 25 years) and GenXs (ages 30 to 40 years), Embassy Group decided to offer smart homes for the first-time and the tech-savvy home buyers.
The project, called Embassy Edge, is located in north Bengaluru, where many technology and IT jobs are available. The region has created over 50,000 jobs and is becoming one of the largest IT cluster after Whitefield, India.
The new homes will come with Echo devices built-in. Homeowners will be able to ask the voice assistant to play music, ask about the weather forecast and order products from Amazon, from the very first moment they move in.
If they install other smart home devices, such as washing machines, smart TVs and smart lightbulbs, they can also control these gadgets with voice.
“Being the first in real estate to bring this integration of voice-enabled homes in India, we believe that this will revolutionize the residential sector. We will be replicating this concept in our other residential projects across micro markets,” said Jitu Virwani, chairman and managing director at Embassy Group.
In addition to India, Amazon has worked with homebuilders in similar projects in the U.S. and other markets.
Although Amazon Alexa works with over 12,000 devices in the U.S., not all of them are available in India. Amazon, however, said that device manufacturers are more interested in entering the market as Echo devices gain popularity.
Amazon launched its Echo devices in India in October 2017; Google entered the market with Google Home speakers in February 2018. India has become the next battlefield for Alexa and Google Assistant.