A leading Indian media conglomerate, established in 2007, has built an extensive network of channels and content production studios across the country. With a workforce exceeding 2,500 professionals nationwide, the organisation needed a media company access control system that could keep pace with a business built around constant movement of staff, guests and production crews.
The Challenge – Securing 118 access points without slowing operations down
The client’s office in Lower Parel, Mumbai, spans 118 access points, each requiring a different level of control depending on what sits behind it. The organisation wanted a seamless, high-tech solution delivered as a one-time investment rather than a system requiring constant manual overhead, with visitor access limited strictly to designated sections of the building.
As a prominent media organisation, the client also needed a way to verify visitor credentials without disrupting day-to-day operations or drawing attention to the process, while keeping different critical areas segmented according to their own security requirements.
A blanket approach to access control for media companies wasn’t going to work across a building with this much variation in who needs to go where.
The Solution – Mapping security by zone, not by blanket coverage
Smart-i’s team began by mapping the entire office and dividing it into zones based on criticality, then designed varied security levels for each zone, controlled only by designated employees rather than left open to general access. High-security areas received facial recognition, while other zones were covered by multi-door and standalone controllers depending on the sensitivity of what they protected.
Visitor management was folded into the same centralised software layer used for employee access, replacing manual visitor cards with a system that verifies credentials digitally and keeps a record of who enters, when, and for how long, without adding a physical card-issuing step to the front desk’s workload.
The technology behind the rollout
- smartFACE-8 inch
An Aadhaar-verified, Linux-based facial recognition terminal that authenticates in under 0.3 seconds using an 8-inch display and dual 2-megapixel cameras. Its live detection algorithm includes mask detection and anti-spoofing checks, giving the client biometric access control for the zones where card-based entry alone wasn’t enough. The terminal supports up to 30,000 registered faces and 80,000 capture records, well within range for a workforce of this size at a single site. - smartXS NG (2 Door 2 Reader)
Covers general office and studio areas with multi-door coverage, supporting up to 100,000 users and 400,000 transactions per unit. It integrates directly with card, PIN and biometric readers, so zones that don’t need facial recognition still connect into the same enterprise access control system rather than running on separate hardware. - smartSCMD-DUO
Runs the entire deployment from one cloud-based platform, handling employee access and visitor management, and MIS reporting across every zone and every device. The same software that manages daily staff attendance also tracks visitor movement, giving the security team a single point of oversight instead of separate logs for employees and guests.
The Outcome – Access that matches the sensitivity of each zone
- Only authorised employees can enter each zone, based on the specific security level assigned to it rather than a single building-wide policy.
- Movement data across zones and controllers gives the security team visibility into access patterns by individual and by area, supporting media infrastructure security without needing separate monitoring tools.
- Visitor verification integrated with Smart-i Software, providing seamless employee access management while reducing the operational workload associated with managing visitor access.
- MIS reporting covers both employee and visitor movement, including how long visitors spend on-site, all from one system.
- The platform scales to accommodate new requirements as they come up, without needing a separate rollout for each addition.
In Conclusion
The client now runs a media company access control system where the level of security at any given door matches what’s actually behind it, rather than applying the same rules everywhere. Facial recognition handles the zones that need it, multi-door coverage handles the rest, and one software platform ties employee and visitor management into a single view for the security team.
For a media organisation where staff, guests and production crews move through the building constantly, that distinction matters. Enterprise access control here is much more than keeping unauthorised people out; it’s about making sure the right people move through the right zones without the process becoming a bottleneck to daily operations.