Aeris said it has collaborated with Malaviya Centre for Incubation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MCIIE) and Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi to establish a ‘Internet of Things – Centre of Excellence’ (CoE) on the IIT BHU campus. All entities aim to jointly address the pressing need in India to develop workers’ skills, accelerate innovation and increase entrepreneurship in emerging technologies like IoT.
The global IoT market is expected to cross $200 billion by 2020, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. India now accounts for 43 percent or USD $1.5 billion of the global $3.5 billion IoT market, according to Zinnov Zones. This is expected to grow to $15 billion, with 5.6 billion devices in India by 2020, according to Nasscom and Deloitte. This presents a significant opportunity for Indian technologists, startups and service providers to help advance IoT technology adoption.
With IoT converging different technologies, multi-disciplinary skillsets are the key requirement for filling new job roles. More than 220,000 new engineers will be needed globally every year for the next 10 years to keep up with the IoT technological surge, according to Cisco. More than 500,000 program managers and 4.5 million IoT developers will be needed by 2020, reflecting a 57 percent compound annual growth rate.
The collaboration between Aeris and IIT BHU, one of the top engineering institutes in India, will enable the creation of indigenous and innovative IoT solutions, supporting the “Digital India” mission and “Make in India” initiative. The Aeris IoT platform will be deployed at the IoT-CoE as part of the MCIIE and will be used by IIT-BHU scholars for projects of academic interest, as well as serving as an incubation platform for startups for the development of connected and integrated smart solutions. Aeris employees from India and USA will provide training and hands-on experiences in IoT technology.
