India at the cusp of IoT explosion

DUBLIN: According to Machina Research data cited at the TiE panel, the global market for IoT in 2020 will be worth $373 billion in revenue, with $194 billion from hardware and $179 billion from software.

India will account for $10-12 billion of this total revenue-but this figure can be much higher if proactive steps in tapping hardware potential and building IoT skill sets is taken by Indian companies.

According to a new report from Research&Markets, the IoT sector's growth is catering to both India's internal Make in India initiative from Government of India and external outsourcing and product relationship opportunities available from developed world.

Being second in terms of number of digital connectivity (mobile phones) only after China, India is a lucrative and open market for IoT companies driven by both the consumers as well as the government, the report said. India is at the cusp of IoT explosion!

The consumers are likely to pay for services especially in healthcare (improved healthcare services and notifications), home automation (security), lifestyle (automobile—analyzing running condition of cars), and airport— (boarding information) etc.

In the government segment, the area for IoT companies is to focus on Department of Electronics and Information Technology, (DeitY) and work with available funding in improving policy and service enablement of Digital India services targeted at the common man. The vendors will need to adapt themselves as per varying physical conditions such as temperature and climate, R&D capabilities in the Indian ecosystem, erratic power supply and spotty telecom coverage.

The success will depend on how well these IoT solutions can integrate with government policies, decision making timeframe, manpower and skill sets availability for implementation services.

However, there are challenges.

Although the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing sector is projected to cross $400 billion in 2020, more than 65 percent of India's hardware is imported. The country’s electronic import value is estimated as the same size as India's petroleum imports. Most of India's hardware components in the mobile phone assembly industry are imported from China, and tests of locally developed hardware components are usually done in the US, Europe or China.