The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET India) along with MMI recently organised a one day conference on the Internet of Things in New Delhi recently to accelerate the evolving movement of IoT in India.
In an interview with Rashi Varshney of Express Computer, Shekhar Sanyal, Country Head and Director, IET India, and Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chair of the IET IoT Panel and Global Head, Digital Enterprise Services, Tech Mahindra spoke about the India’s opportunities and challenges in IoT sector,how India can tab the opportunities in Internet of Things, and how this can make ‘Digital India’ vision achievable faster.
Edited Excerpts
What are the opportunities and challenges in IoT sector?
Rishi Bhatnagar: While talking of opportunities in the IoT, the first requirement is the “things”. There is the need for sensors and devices.
The mobile industry came in India in early 90s. And India has also seen a very slow adoption in the first 10 years with the amount of people having access to mobile connectivity being very less. Then there were policy changes as a result of which the device cost and the cost of communication got reduced and now we have billion people with mobile connectivity.
Similarly if we want to see IoT prosper we will need the cost of the devices has to reduce to be economical to the common man. Also the battery stand has to be more long lasting to ensure better productivity. This outlines 2 major opportunities for us. One is more manufacture in India and second it brings in more R&D.
Now talking of challenges, if there are 50 billion devices to be connected, there are that many chips that needs to be produced and we do not have that kind of capacity to build in the given time span. This means big corporations will have to invest to develop them. So we have the demand and the money but the capacity is a big challenge. We also have other challenges in terms of standardization but in terms of manufacturing, the capacity is the biggest hindrance and who will invest.
The Indian government has been talking a lot about Digital India, but from an industry point of view what is required to achieve Digital India?
Rishi Bhatnagar: Digital India as a whole has three objectives – 1. Providing the whole infrastructure like the mobile network. For the industry, the requirement was to make the infrastructure available, thereby providing a huge market in the villages that I can capture. So from the industry, I will have solution for farmers and the villagers, and that is part one of Digital India.
The second aspect is the huge amount of job creation for people in villages without rooting out the youth to metros and the third aspect is the infrastructure which is lacking for innovation to happen in India. When government of India, as part of Digital India will be able to provide that infrastructure, then the people will be able to access, ideate and connect, resulting in an evolution of innovation.
In terms of IoT, how far has Indian reach in comparison to other countries across the globe? how can India can tap this opportunity?
Rishi Bhatnagar: The western world is quite advanced in terms of IoT adoption. The amount of solutions available in Australia, New Zealand and Japanese market is much advanced; Japan by far is the most advanced. Singapore is a smart nation and many of the things are already connected. Recently, I was at Copenhagen, in Denmark, wherein you fall sick eating something, they can figure out which chicken was eaten by you and what did the chicken eat to cause the sickness. That’s the level of analytics is happening across. India is way behind.
And the reason for that is not the lack of technology in India, but the lack of infrastructure. Once there is broadband and mobile connectivity availability, we will be in a position to implement solutions in India. Reva is a battery operated car with all forms of IoT related solutions. So we have that technology. But the cost of the technology or the cost of operating the technology may be relatively higher, which is resisting us in having that level of intake.
So in terms of Digital India, If there are 50,000 gram panchayats are connected with the broadband connectivity, that will be infrastructure available enabling us that allows us to have these kind of technology implemented.
How can India stand at par with other countries? What are the steps we need to take?
Shekhar Sanyal: There are two levels of challenges. One is India specific and the other is at a global scale common for IoT across all nations. India specific challenges are infrastructure and connectivity. But the bigger challenge globally is standards and interoperability and skills.These are the three big challenges not exclusive to India but faced globally.
There is no single standard so everyone follows their own standards, resulting in interoperability as being a problem; thereby IoT solutions are limited to the available platforms. They don’t talk to each other resulting in bigger impact. IoT will change the way we live in every aspect – the way we talk, the way we communicate, the way we do business, the way we do banking etc. The social impact of the same is going to be huge.
Rishi Bhatnagar: Also to add, in India, the “People change management” is also a huge problem. Adoption of the latest technology amongst people habituated to the old practices is a task. The cultural change of asking villagers to use IoT solutions in their day to day life will be much bigger than the rest of the issues. The manner in which the Govt. Of India is pushing adoption of the infrastructure of broadband infrastructure across demographics, if not 250,000 but maybe 200,000 will be achievable. But how will you make the 600 million people sitting in villages to start thinking of mobile banking? That will be a huge challenge.
What are the challenges of IoT in terms of government policies?
Rishi Bhatnagar: Since this is an emerging thing the request to the government is to not to make a policy. Because unless we know its potential it makes sense to have a policy, else it can restrain the innovation that the technology is capable of. So for now, all these campaigns like Digital India, is trying to take a small bit of the whole technology and create a procedure for the same. Policies come when things get slightly mature. The internet is emerging, so let it develop and then we can create a policy around it.
Where do see India stand in the next 5 years in terms of IoT?
Rishi Bhatnagar: The series of projects happening currently like the Ganga Rejuvenation plan, The Nirbhaya project, the smart city plan, the digital India campaign are all a by product of IoT. At this rate I am sure India is going to be altogether a new country by 5 years.
Please tell us about the IET IoT Panel?
Shekhar Sanyal: The IET is the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a professional body for engineers founded some 143 years back in London. It was established as the Institute of Electrical Engineers and later termed as the IET. The basic objective of this organisation is to provide a platform for engineers and give them a stage to share their knowledge and be a neutral platform to say this is right and this is wrong and this is the way forward.
So understanding the increasing importance of IoT and the need to focus on the various aspects of IoT not only in terms of manufacturing and service solutions but also skill development, The IET established the IET IoT panel which has 8 main focus points which are split up as 4 verticals and 4 horizontals. The 4 verticals are –Retail, Healthcare, Agriculture and Energy. On these 4 verticals we are trying to see if we can do any pilots that will study the impact. As horizontals we have Education, Legal and Regulations, Labs and Research and Social impact. We focused on only these 8 points as we wanted to ensure results. So we have a core team of 8 people and sub panels where people can work as volunteers and companies like Phillips, GE and Cisco can contribute on what is happening in their areas. The IET IoT panel is focussed to become a body that is aiming to evangelise IoT in India. And it’s the only neutral body in India to speak our minds.
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