IoT – Internet of Things brings together a complete set of technologies (sensors, wireless systems, computing, storage, system integration) for use cases like bringing economies of scale, reducing complexity of business, ability to know different assets and their health, and predictive maintenance.
According to the Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the government had released a draft policy on IoT, which is at the consultation stage. The government is adopting a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for this. Under different programs, the government is partnering with and helping start-ups, mentoring them to develop innovative breakthrough solutions in areas like education tech, healthcare tech, e-gov, financial tech, agri tech and others.
With a significant advantage already in software, India could go to the next stage as hardware-based start-ups come up over the next 3-4 years. Intel demonstrated its intelligent transportation system, which would be useful for the manufacturers of city buses ordered by the government.
The biggest use case for IoT is predictive maintenance for manufacturing firms, but the key reason for strong potential adoption by enterprises will be change in their own business models. For example, manufacturing firms are looking at a scenario where their products will be sold to end consumers on an “as a service” model. This would mean that instead of selling the end product (let’s say automotive tyres or water filters), companies may be selling services (like number of miles traveled, number of liters of water filtered). SAP talked about a similar solution for a business model moving from selling air compressors to selling compressed air, for clients like Kaeser Kompressoren.