It's all about reinventing

In our first series of interviews speaking to companies leveraging on Distributed Ledger Technology we are going to introduce you to Raghu Bala, CEO at Netobjex, to share his experience and thoughts on the topic. Mr Bala is a graduate from Wharton business school with an MBA in Finance and degrees in Computer Science and Math; he has been in the tech industry for 27 years serving at companies like Yahoo, Infospace and PW and is now lecturing at MIT Sloan and MIT CSAIL on the impact of AI on Business Strategy. Over the past few years Mr Bala has focused extensively on IoT and has also been exploring the world of DLT.

His firm, NetObjex, is an IoT platform company providing comprehensive end-to-end IoT solutions to automate operational processes and enable enterprises make more informed decisions. NetObjex has also been in the spotlight for having been one of the first companies to provide PoCs based on the IOTA cryptocurrency and decentralized network.

Following the highlights from our conversation with Raghu:

·      How did you become interested in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)?

I have been interested in DLT and blockchain for a while; from a developer’s standpoint, I have been working on it for a couple of years. Prior to that I used to keep an eye on Bitcoin but it was only when Ethereum came out that I realized this technology could be leveraged on many other industries. Last year I attended a conference in Hong Kong called Chain of Things hosting different interesting speakers and talking about how Blockchain along with IoT could be used to improve processes in the shipping industry. The conference really opened my eyes and convinced me to deepen my knowledge and involvement in DLT.

·      Why did you decide to use the IOTA protocol for your PoCs?

Over the last several months, I have been in contact with IOTA’s founders, including David and Dominik, frequently. When a member of the IOTA team, located in Thailand, invited NetObjex for a hackathon in Bangkok, we sent a team to participate. We had never used IOTA until then. The hackathon was based on smart energy, and in 26 hours we managed to develop a solution focused on smart meters and autonomous payments through the use of the IOTA Tangle. It was during that hackathon that we realized the potential of this new technology and the possibility to embed it within IoT-enabled devices. We had actually been working on this idea prior to IOTA by leveraging on the Ethereum infrastructure. The feedback I often received was that for micro-transactions the amount of “gas” paid to run the app was too high and was rendering the system unsustainable over time. When IOTA came around, we said well, maybe this is the best solution for m2m transactions since it has no transaction fees and is very scalable.

·      How using IOTA has helped your company?

First, IOTA has no transaction fees, which is a big deal basically in any context;

Second, IOTA is helping us enable the M2M economy. Through our platform, we at Netobjex have been working on the concepts of inter-device interactions: this process involves a decentralized ID and distributed ledger technology for device discovery, authentication, communication and transacting. As an example, think of the world wide web: in the World Wide Web a website is recognizable by different browsers because of the underlying infrastructure that standardizes the system. In the world of IoT there is no standard yet: each enterprise acts like a silo with its own set of devices. There is no unique connection or ID identifier. So, our NetObjex platform acts as the middleware between edge devices and decentralized network. We built an adapter in our platform to connect to the IOTA network. With this, it is now possible to create a standard system wherein devices have their own ID and can be discovered by all other actors in the network. Once devices can discover each other they are able to transact. This is how the M2M economy is enabled;

Third, we believe the transaction volume in the IoT industry will become significant in the future. IOTA promises scalability using Directed Acyclic Graphs as opposed to blockchain. To be frank, all the decentralized networks existing so far are slow, which is why many companies have not shifted to decentralized networks yet: their client-server structure is still faster. IOTA’s scalable data structure may represent a solution to this problem.

·      Do you think DLT will develop beyond IOTA?

The model of computing, which has been predominantly client-server for about 40 years, is going to evolve towards decentralized computing. In my opinion, this will not be the case for each industry or business case but it will impact different areas. This technology is improving quickly and that’s why I think in the next year we will already see greater adoption of DLT ecosystems. It is important for people to stay on the lookout and be ready for disruption. Nowadays, working in a technology-based industry I feel like every 5 years I have to reinvent myself. Reinvention is the secret to stay competitive and keep pace with the Industry 4.0 era.

For more information about Netobjex go here -> https://www.netobjex.com/

Thanks Raghu for your time and Jochen for giving us this amazing opportunity.