In the by-lanes of Gaffar Market, 55-year-old P L Arora presides over his cluttered stall. Two years ago, he was sewing sports shoes in a factory. But as terror attacks in the country increased, he decided to cash in on the pressing demand for security equipment by selling CCTV cameras — which cost anything between Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 — instead. “Sometimes, I sell five CCTVs a day,” Arora says.

From the rising graph of sales of inexpensive Chinese-made CCTV cameras like the ones available in Gaffar Market to sophisticated gizmos such as robotic sensors, manufacturers and vendors of security equipment are targeting an expanding customer base — hotels, corporate houses and the services industry. Understandably, the hotel industry has taken the lead in gearing up. The Taj Group, for instance, recently placed orders for 22 X-ray baggage-inspection systems from Smiths Detection, a leading supplier of baggage scanners.

Even companies that did most of their business with the Government have capitalised on the boom. Post 26/11, Security Shoppe, which has the distribution rights for Garrett security systems, and had earlier supplied items like door-frames and hand-held metal detectors to the Special Protection Group and for use in Parliament, now has orders from ITC, Taj, Hyatt, Imperial, Radisson hotels. “The demand is high from the hospitality sector,” says Anup Gulati, MD, Security Shoppe. The Sheraton Hotel, Agra, for example, had a “comprehensive” CCTV surveillance system but not a compatible recording system. Soon after the attacks, the hotel invested in a monitoring room where video records can be stored for up to two months.

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