The phenomenon of getting smart devices to communicate with each other over the Internet, without human intervention, has led to the much-hyped term, the Internet of Things (IoT). While much is expected from this evolving technology, the Electronics Bazaar team takes a closer look at the opportunities and constraints
By Sudeshna Das
(with inputs from Sneha Ambastha)
What is the biggest challenge in India’s growth story when we consider any sector – agriculture, power, education, healthcare or infrastructure? The answer is simple—it’s the country’s inability to keep up with the global standards of productivity and efficiency. The Internet of Things (IoT)—the connectivity between people, things and data— can help in a big way to improve this situation.
Perhaps one of the earliest and best-known applications of such technology has been in the area of energy optimisation—sensors deployed across the electricity grid can help utilities remotely monitor energy usage, and adjust generation and distribution flows to account for peak times and downtimes. So this is the role that the IoT can play—increase productivity and efficiency. Similar applications can be introduced in a number of other sectors.
A farmer, for example, can get harvest and other farm related data captured by GPS satellites, as well as by the sensors on tractors and in the field. This real-time data can be stored in cloud-based systems so that the farmer can easily access it via charts and reports, with the help of the applications on his mobile device or tablet. This data will then help him decide which seeds to plant, when to harvest and how much yield to expect, all of which will enable more efficient production.
Medical practitioners can use the information collected from wireless sensors in their patients’ homes to improve their management of chronic diseases. Through continuous monitoring rather than periodic testing, the treatment efficiency can be improved while the treatment costs can be reduced.
The market for IoT related components, products and solutions is bound to grow significantly in the country as soon as consumers, businesses and the government start recognising the benefits of connecting inert devices with people and data. That market, in turn, may represent a significant growth opportunity for organisations offering those related components, products and solutions.
Executives from such organisations were surveyed recently as part of our monthly industry poll. In this article, we take the pulse of the IoT market in India.
Seizing the opportunity
According to NASSCOM, an apex trade organisation for the IT and IT enabled products and services industry, the global IoT business is expected to touch US$ 300 billion by 2020, and India aims to capture 20 per cent of that market in another five years. This reflects the transformational potential of the IoT in both consumer and business-to-business applications.
In sync with this projection, 95 per cent of the executives we interviewed stated that the IoT business of the country will see positive growth in the financial year 2016-17 (Figure 1). Forty-two per cent of the respondents expected 10 to 20 per cent year-on-year growth (Figure 2).
At present, the growth of the IoT business is primarily driven by consumers shifting from using devices such as laptops and tablets to using smart sensors, wearables and clustered systems like fitness trackers or smart homes. However, with the goal to improve human productivity, safety and the overall quality of life through a network of smart connected devices, the potential of IoT technology seems to manifest itself in applications far beyond just consumer electronics, showing promise in other markets and applications including energy, water, traffic management, industrial IoT, surveillance and security, etc.
High growth in this market is anticipated on account of ongoing developments in IoT technology, which provide better connectivity and coverage as well as real-time monitoring/tracking of services and systems across diverse industry verticals to reduce operational and manpower costs. Various government projects such as smart cities, smart transportation, smart grids, etc, are also expected to propel the adoption of IoT technology in the country. Therefore, the initial smart product-oriented applications in white goods, cars, etc, will be extended to improve supply chain agility, manufacturing and operational efficiency, etc.
India’s advantages
Government policies will play a major role in accelerating early adoption of the IoT in the country. State driven applications like smart cities, etc, are still considered as key factors for large scale adoption. The prime minister’s vision of smart cities and a Digital India will leverage IoT to address and solve problems that large cities are facing in becoming smart. Issues such as transportation systems, parking, lighting, waste management, water management, women’s safety, etc, are matters of top priority. We will need sensors at strategic points to collect data, applications to analyse data and analytics to ensure quick decision-making.
Digital infrastructure is expected to create huge opportunities for technology companies across verticals and in key applications within smart cities, smart health systems, and smart transportation. In India, technology visionaries and several startups are flooding the market with smart devices, with the intent of taking IoT adoption to the next level. The following domains would see heightened activity both in innovation and in the adoption of IoT:
- Urban safety management (including transportation)
- Environmental monitoring
- Delivery of government services
- Healthcare
- Utilities
Not only the government, but even businesses can reap many benefits by using the IoT ecosystem. The biggest advantage is that many Indian industries have not been automated, and IoT offers an opportunity to leapfrog a couple of generations of manufacturing technology and go straight into the IoT era, saving a lot of time and money.
For example, manufacturers can remotely monitor the condition of equipment and look for indicators of imminent failures like vibration, temperature or pressure outside normal limits. This means that the manufacturer has to make fewer site visits, and employees can devote time to other critical issues, thereby reducing fixed and variable costs. For the customer, it means less disruption, increased uptime and, ultimately, higher satisfaction.
Taking IoT to the next level, manufacturers can offer pay-per-use options, inclusive of all hardware, installation and servicing. IoT is already heralding transformation across industries and will bring about significant changes in the coming years. It can help organisations utilise their business infrastructure and assets in innovative ways to offer new services and deliver additional revenue. Moreover, deriving meaningful information from the huge volumes of data that IoT produces can improve decision-making and enable proactive, predictive insights into work processes.
The integration of IoT into the healthcare system could prove to be incredibly beneficial. A chip could be implanted into each individual, allowing for hospitals to monitor the vital signs of the patient. IoT can also function as a tool that can help people save money by making home appliances communicate in an energy-efficient way. In fact, it can help to design innumerable ways of offering innovative services, using smart devices, machines and products.
Organisations can benefit from new revenue streams generated by new business models and services, as well as reduced time to market and increased returns from their R&D investments. Today’s manufacturers face extraordinary challenges in the form of rigid specifications, tight timelines and even tighter budgets. IoT can help with the performance tracking of large industrial equipment, and the monitoring and control of factory assets. Analogue sensors, for instance, are used to measure real-world conditions and process control systems measure performance and control manufacturing.
Opportunities beckon
According to the survey participants, the top three demand-generating application areas (Figure 3) are expected to be:
1. Industrial (smart factories, industrial Internet, etc)
2. Energy (smart grids)
3. Building and home automation (smart homes)
Organisations in industries such as consumer durables, automotive, electricity supply, manufacturing, logistics and retail, that can effectively harness and exploit the data created by the IoT, will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.
IoT offers huge revenue generation opportunities in the areas of:
- Business intelligence and analytics for decision support
- Security level management and performance
management - Professional services including consulting, integration, software development
- Connectivity and communication services, associated hardware, devices and components
According to 47.6 per cent of the survey participants, smart services like business intelligence (BI) and analytics are going to capture the largest share of the overall revenue pie (Figure 4). Business intelligence and analytics, which would include decision-making, alerts, etc, is expected to generate more revenue because many companies will want to get their hands on newer technologies that offer more benefits and values.
Intelligent analytics tools provide guidance on best practices to enable users to make the most of the data. An IoT solution must deliver business value and this can happen through BI, which holds the key to understanding customer preferences and making products that address key requirements in a customer’s life.
An ample number of IoT solutions are available in the market, but one needs to be diligent in choosing the right one, and this can be done through BI. Second, building up good intelligence calls for a lot of domain knowledge, especially as operations transit from being reactive to predictive. This is where most of the intelligence would contribute to sales and revenue enhancement, and so would be of interest to many.
Analytics directly gives the companies assured feedback of customer behaviour, which saves a lot of market research time. It helps keep track of processes and increases productivity. There are firms that help generate analytical reports. While the cost of collecting data is getting lower, very few organisations have the time and ability to analyse the data and convert it into actionable insights. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will drive the next technology wave in business operations, and will be aided by high resolution IoT driven data, the likes of which has never been seen or used before.
According to almost 24 per cent of the survey participants, value creation will also stem from the hardware, software, services and integration activities provided by the technology companies that enable the Internet of Things (Figure 4). The number of connected devices across the world is expected to reach 26-30 billion by 2020, according to a Gartner forecast. India will constitute about 30 per cent of this overall pie. Device connectivity is the fundamental aspect of any IoT application. So the sheer volume of deployment will generate a huge demand for the communication hardware, devices and also services. And this is where electronics plays a role.
Each of the IoT devices will require, at the minimum, a microcontroller to add intelligence to the device, one or more sensors to allow for data collection, one or more chips for connectivity and data transmission, and a memory component. The connected devices that transmit information across the relevant networks rely on innovations from semiconductor players—highly integrated microchip designs, for instance, and very low-power functions in certain applications. The semiconductor companies that can effectively deliver these and other innovations to original-equipment manufacturers, original-device manufacturers, and others that are building Internet of Things products and applications will play an important role in the development of the market. That market, in turn, may represent a significant growth opportunity for semiconductor players and their customers.
A tectonic shift in technology
Wide adoption of the IoT may need a new class of System-on-Chips (SoC) based devices, with provision for optimal power and connectivity features as well as with sensor integration. The first generation of such chips are already on the way, although it will probably be a few generations before chips can deliver all the functionality required.
Additionally, a new array of sensors based on micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology are rapidly being developed to enable IoT applications beyond motion and image sensing to include those that measure humidity, altitude, food calorie composition, and human health indicators. This is a result of the increasing variety of consumer IoT applications such as wearables and clustered systems.
Connectivity being a key capability required in IoT applications, multiple communications standards and protocols are being supported by consumer electronics and industrial devices like low power and personal area wireless mesh networks, which are primarily suited for sensors. IoT applications usually require a single chip at an acceptable form factor and low power consumption for battery-operated devices. This requirement is a factor for growth in SoCs with embedded cores, GPUs and integrated wireless connectivity in a single package. Moreover, progress in these technologies has allowed the development of IoT devices such as sensors that have compute, storage and network capabilities built into extremely small form factors with low energy requirements.
On the service front, one emerging requirement will be asynchronous (non-base station assisted) data transmission by the device. This will lower the cost of the device and the entire infrastructure. This will also need security in order to prevent tampering with the data transmitted by the device. And reduction in the ISO-OSI stack will help; working closer to the PHY layer will be better suited in terms of cost, power, carbon dioxide emissions, etc.
On the flip side
Like any other innovative concept, the growth of IoT also depends on several factors. We asked the survey participants to suggest the possible challenges that could derail the growth of the IoT in the country. Here is a collation of their opinions:
- Lack of awareness, and limited availability of real products and services
- High cost of connectivity
- Inadequate security and privacy protection for user data
- Lack of consistent standards
- Technological limitations that affect the IoT’s functionality
- Discontinued and fragmented IoT value chain
- Lack of cost-effective solutions
However, the hope is that these problems are not insurmountable, particularly if the electronics industry players are willing to take an active role in solving them.
Methodology
For the survey, 120 senior professionals involved in the IoT industry were randomly selected. Of these, 22 shared their inputs. This sample is a microcosmic representation of India’s IoT industry. Survey participants were requested to share their insights on the following:
1. The growth of the Indian IoT industry in FY 2016-17
2. Expected growth per cent
3. The major demand generating applications
4. Customer categorisation
5. Hindrances that impact the growth of this sector
6. Technology trends in this sector
The responses obtained from the interviews were then collated and analysed.
A quick look at the IoT landscape in India
DeitY’s vision
- To create an IoT industry in India with a turnover of US$ 15 billion by 2020 (around 5-6 per cent of the global IoT industry)
- To develop IoT products specific to Indian needs in all possible domains
- To have a strong emphasis on R&D, demo centres, standards, governance, etc
Focus areas
- Smart technology to manage cities, water, transport, environment, health, agriculture, waste management, safety, supply chains, etc
Investment from the government
- 100 smart cities -> Rs. 70.6 billion
Potential challenges
- Getting devices connected, given the Indian scenario of extreme temperatures, high levels of humidity and dust, lack of clean and continuous power, inadequate telecom coverage, etc, can be daunting.
- Security and privacy: Government policy regarding user privacy in IoT networks needs to be framed in order to prevent theft, tampering of devices and data.
- IoT business models need to first address affordability to a billion people.
- Technology and standards: An IoT solution will involve many stakeholders; so alignment to global standards is important.
Survey participants
1. Abhishek Haridasan, marketing and communications specialist, Tata Technologies
2. Dr Amarjeet Singh, CTO, Zenatix Solutions Pvt Ltd
3. Anand T., MD, KNEWRON Technologies Pvt Ltd
4. Ashish Gulati, country head, India, Telit
5. Chandramouli Srinivasan, CEO, Mobodexter
6. Dileep Jain, sales head, Rajguru Electronics
7. Gopinath Y, CBO, ConnectM
8. Hemant Patil, COE-Head Manufacturing IT, Tata Technologies
9. Jayakrishnan K.B., co-founder, Wisys Technologies
10. Krupa Shukla, CEO, Yups Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd
11. Ming Yu, business development manager, Moxa India Industrial Networking
12. M. Vinod Kumar, staff engineer, Tejas Networks Ltd
13. Niraj Tyagi, Head-CoE manufacturing, Tata Technologies
14. Payal Sharma, marketing manager, Invendis Technologies India Pvt. Ltd
15. P. Chow Reddy, MD, Interleaved Technologies
16. Rakesh Varun R., chief strategy officer, Hyperthink Systems
17. Shachindra, CEO, NeerAssure
18. Syam Madanapalli, IEEE senior member, executive member of IEEE Bengaluru chapter
19. Sreowshi Sinha, co-founder and director-marketing, Frugal Labs Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd
20. Dr Srinivas Mandavilli, country manager, Imagination Technologies
21. Srinivasa Moorthy, CEO, Andhra Pradesh Electronics & IT Agency
22. Sujata Tilak, MD, Ascent Intellimation Pvt Ltd
