HYDERABAD: For CEO & Founder of OpenCube Technologies, P Vinod Kumar, collecting patents seems like an obsession. He already has six patents on his name for technologies that are both innovative and essential. For instance, his latest patent is a technology that blocks video cameras in cinema halls, to prevent piracy. He has also made the country’s first Gold ATM and installed it in Telangana.
With his Gold ATM clients can use their debit or credit card to buy gold coins in a variety of quantities from 0.5 grammes to 100 grammes using this ATM. The prices are shown in real-time, instead of being fixed for the day, on the screen for the consumers’ convenience, and the coins are distributed in tamper-evident packs that are 999-purity verified and were recently installed by Hyderabad-based Goldsikka Pvt Ltd. “Yes! You may purchase yellow metal at ATM without stopping by an actual jewellery store at 5 am or 12 pm,” he says.
“The ATM I invented is perhaps the only one in the world that is equipped with the latest technologies and can dispense gold starting from 0.5 grammes. There are such ATMs in London and Dubai as well, but none dispense gold quantities below 2 grammes,” Vinod said. He added, “Gold ATM is just something that has got a lot of hype because it’s different, I actually have developed a lot of technologies that are beneficial and I have been doing it like it’s a play.”
Vinod is an electronic engineering graduate, who when in college was interested in Computer Science and Web Development, so, he started working when he was 18 years while going to college. “I was no less interested in Electronic Engineering, during the final year of my college, I had to do a single dissertation but I did 36 for friends and some of the projects for faculty members, simply because I like doing it.”
