Dr Ramya Chatterjee, CEO, Solitaire Brand Business; MD, Prointek Global Innovations, Technology & Business Leader, in conversation with Emerging Manufacturing Magazine.
Q. Despite growing investments in collaboration tools, what are the biggest gaps organisations still face in creating a seamless workplace experience?
Despite significant investments in collaboration technologies, I believe the biggest challenge organisations face today is not the availability of technology, but the lack of seamless integration between technology, people, and workplace processes.
There are five critical gaps that continue to impact the workplace experience:
- Technology Fragmentation & Interoperability: Organisations often deploy multiple collaboration platforms, video conferencing systems, and AV solutions that operate in silos. The absence of interoperability creates unnecessary complexity and compromises the user experience.
- Inconsistent User Experience: Employees expect the same intuitive, frictionless collaboration experience whether they are working from a boardroom, a huddle space, their home, or a remote location. Unfortunately, inconsistent technology infrastructure often makes this difficult.
- Underutilisation of Technology: While organisations invest heavily in sophisticated collaboration solutions, user adoption and effective utilisation remain relatively low. Technology investments must be complemented by employee training, intuitive interfaces, and change management.
- Lack of Intelligent Automation: AI has tremendous potential to transform workplace collaboration through intelligent meeting summaries, automated transcription, real-time translation, smart camera tracking, and contextual assistance. However, many organisations are still at an early stage of integrating these capabilities into their everyday workflows.
- Inadequate Focus on Measurable ROI: Technology investments are frequently evaluated based on hardware specifications and acquisition costs rather than tangible business outcomes such as productivity improvement, employee engagement, operational efficiency, and total cost of ownership.
In my view, the future of workplace collaboration is about moving from technology-centric deployments to experience-centric ecosystems.
As an industry, we must focus on delivering intelligent, interoperable, secure, and user-friendly collaboration environments where technology works seamlessly in the background, allowing people to focus on communication, creativity, and productivity.
Ultimately, the success of a connected workplace should not be measured by how much technology an organisation deploys, but by how effortlessly its people can collaborate and achieve meaningful outcomes.
Q. How can AI help address these challenges and make meeting rooms more intelligent and productive beyond basic features such as transcription and meeting summaries?
AI can transform meeting rooms from conventional communication spaces into intelligent, adaptive, and productivity-driven collaboration environments. Beyond transcription and summaries, AI can enable intelligent camera tracking, adaptive audio optimisation, real-time multilingual collaboration, automated room controls, and predictive device maintenance.
More importantly, AI can analyse meeting patterns, optimise room utilisation, automate routine workflows, and provide contextual insights that support faster, more informed decision-making.
The real value of AI lies in making technology proactive rather than reactive—creating seamless, intuitive, and personalised collaboration experiences. Ultimately, the objective is to make meeting rooms smarter while allowing people to focus on what truly matters: collaboration, creativity, and outcomes.
Q. How will Solitaire’s product roadmap evolve over the next two to three years, particularly in integrated AV and hybrid collaboration solutions?
Over the next two to three years, Solitaire’s product roadmap will focus on building an integrated, AI-powered AV and unified collaboration ecosystem, moving beyond standalone hardware solutions.
Our strategic priorities include expanding our portfolio of intelligent interactive displays, AI-enabled video conferencing solutions, smart cameras, video bars, and integrated meeting room technologies. We will place strong emphasis on interoperability, platform-agnostic collaboration, intelligent automation, and seamless integration across hybrid work environments.
AI will remain central to our innovation strategy, enabling smarter meeting experiences through intelligent participant tracking, adaptive audio-video optimisation, and contextual collaboration capabilities. Simultaneously, we aim to strengthen our Make in India capabilities, indigenous software development, and global market presence, delivering solutions that are technologically advanced, scalable, and cost-effective.
Our ultimate vision is to transform Solitaire from a product-centric AV brand into a comprehensive, AI-driven collaboration solutions provider – making every meeting space smarter, more connected, and more productive.
Q. Looking at the broader market, how does India’s adoption of intelligent meeting rooms compare with global markets, and what could accelerate adoption in the coming years?
India is emerging as one of the most promising markets for intelligent meeting room solutions, although adoption is still evolving compared to mature markets such as North America, Western Europe, and parts of East Asia.
While global markets have progressed towards AI-driven, fully integrated, and automated collaboration environments, India is witnessing a transition from conventional AV infrastructure to intelligent, hybrid-ready meeting spaces. Large enterprises, GCCs, IT/ITES companies, and multinational organisations are leading this transformation.
I believe three key factors will accelerate adoption in India: affordability, interoperability, and awareness of measurable ROI. Additionally, the growing hybrid workforce, expansion of GCCs, increasing AI integration, and availability of cost-effective, locally manufactured solutions will act as strong catalysts.
India has a unique opportunity to leapfrog traditional AV adoption cycles and move directly towards AI-powered collaboration ecosystems. At Solitaire, we see this as an opportunity to democratise intelligent meeting room technologies, making them accessible not just to large enterprises but also to SMEs and emerging businesses.
The next phase of growth will be driven not merely by technology adoption, but by how effectively intelligent collaboration solutions translate into measurable business productivity.
