A status check on IoT

The IoT India Congress 2017 provided a good perspective on where this technology is heading in India. The Telecom Secretary started it appropriately by bringing up the point on how the failure to come together as an ecosystem will lead to IoT as a missed opportunity for the country. The Secretary represented the government - the policy maker. Other participants included industry (end users, telecom, IT players, startups), non-profit organizations and opinion leaders such as academia, media and analysts.

Accountability – If the IoT ecosystem should function well to address even the most entrenched problems of the country, collaboration is key starting with the government. If the government truly believes that digital is a key driver for the economy and its growth, investment in infrastructure is the need of the hour and is happening all the way to village panchayats with fiber optics. The new upcoming Telecom policy will encourage indigenous infrastructure to ensure security. Security continues to be one of the top barriers for adoption not just in India, but globally. Vulnerabilities that get reported eventually get hacked within a year.

Innovative applications – IoT can go beyond factories and the industry should play a proactive role with focused R&D. Agriculture continues to remain fragmented and is ripe for disruption IMHO. Small scale pilots are happening. For it to be done on a larger canvas, regulation is necessary. One example presented was the usage of drones for optimized pesticide spraying, which needs police approval even in rural areas.

Healthcare can move to value based services tied to patient outcome along the entire continuum of services with increasing consumer engagement of digitally savvy, ageing patients. In the BFSI sector, the trust deficit for new technologies has to be plugged if IoT has to bring about financial inclusion all the way to villages. Ease of use and incentives for digital transactions must be encouraged. Blockchain can bring about a distributed, transparent tracking system moving away from a centralized command & control model. Ganga Rejuvenation was an idea discussed in length in the conference and IET has been consulting with the National Mission for its cleansing using technology.

Specialization – As reported in media recently, GE seems to have found that IoT cannot scale horizontally. Platform providers cannot compete at each layer, needing specialization and domain knowledge from usecase definition to infrastructure and performance of each moving part. In the case of Ganga Rejuvenation, it is not the sensors, telemetry or the platform that is vital. It is our understanding of the problem itself. As explained by Water Man Dr. Rajendra Singh and other experts, the very definition of a river has to be understood as a living entity, a natural multidisciplinary process, a life providing system and a way of living. Real time data can help in location based trending of pollution data. But we need to go beyond that to revive the Ganga – stopping land encroachment and industrial pollution along with community driven decentralized water management linking crop and rain patterns with water usage.

A healthy ecosystem is a must for an emerging areas such as IoT to work successfully. It is not one individual technology but a basket of multiple moving parts. From that perspective, the active participation of a few more players such as device/hardware/sensor makers and end users such as insurance providers will make the ecosystem much more comprehensive. Insurance can adopt IoT to bring in new business models such as ‘usage based insurance’ in the automotive sector for example. IoT does not provide just colorful dashboards with product performance metrics but uses the data to eventually reduce the ‘actuarial risk’, transform the pricing models of policies eventually disrupt the industry.

IT has been an area of strength for India. Telecom is another pillar for IoT and projected to contribute 10 to 15% of revenue in the long term by experts. Startups are expected to play a key role in impactful applications. The Secretary’s estimate is that IoT can contribute 10 to 15 million jobs, primarily by startups. Skill development is a major gap to realize the benefits of IoT and to create employment. As Union Minister for Skill Development Dharmendra Pradhan mentioned in the Global Skills Summit, “We must be prepared and should not miss the industrial revolution this time”. Events such as the IoT Conference will help in multiple stake holders to get together to know each other and in creating awareness on where the jobs lie for those interested in skilling to go for it.

It is important for each player in the ecosystem to come together and play their role to perfection with accountability if IoT has to become, as the organizers put it, the “India of Tomorrow”. The picture above was shared by Dr. Rajendra Singh in his presentation. It aptly describes the potential for IoT. If the business challenge is understood well and mapped appropriately to the technology, even a herculean task such as Ganga Rejuvenation can be done with IoT. As spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said in his address to the IoT enthusiasts and entrepreneurs, “Get into the habit of impossibility, dream big. But be realistic”.

Note: All points-of-view and opinions expressed above are that of the author and do not represent that of any other individual or organization.