Expleo and IIT Madras collaborate to advance smart city safety solutions

New Delhi :  Expleo, a leading global engineering, technology, and consulting service provider, is supporting the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) through its corporate social responsibility to develop cutting-edge safety solutions for urban infrastructure under the government of India’s smart city initiative.

The distributed fibre sensor team led by Prof. Balaji Srinivasan of the department of electrical engineering at IIT Madras has designed a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system. The technology supports the real-time detection of gas leaks and intrusions in residential pipeline networks to enhance urban safety.

The DAS prototype was developed by Folium Sensing, a startup incubated at IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation. It was successfully demonstrated on an experimental testbed at the IIT Madras campus to the visiting Expleo team, led by Unnikrishnan Anilkumar, COO, Expleo – India.

Phani Tangirala, MD & CEO, Expleo Solutions Limited, said: “At Expleo, we believe in the blend of progressive power of technology and highly skilled experts to solve real-world challenges. Our alliance with IIT Madras echoes our commitment to embracing innovation to make cities safer and smarter. We are thrilled to support ITT in this endeavour and look forward to strengthening our association with them in building resilient urban ecosystem.”

Speaking on the partnership, Prof. Balaji Srinivasan, Principal-investigator and Professor at IIT Madras, said: “Our collaboration with Expleo demonstrates how advanced sensing technologies can directly address critical urban safety challenges. It is a powerful example of how industry-academia collaborations deliver innovative and socially impactful solutions to today’s urban challenges. At IIT Madras, we are deeply committed to translating research into technology solutions that enhance quality of life in our cities, and I am confident Expleo’s support enables us to scale this vision for safer, smarter urban development.”

Expleo and IIT Madras aim to explore collaborative opportunities further to scale this impactful work and look to design masterclass sessions for its engineering and technology students to gain insights into industry tools and trends, future skills, access to diverse use-cases and exposure to workflows and team dynamics.