With a huge focus on Digital, India is a big market opportunity for IoT

The Indian government’s focus on building a digital backbone for the country will usher in huge market opportunities for IoT, especially in industries and sectors such as Manufacturing, Agriculture, Enterprise IT, Health and Public Safety, believes Andy Stevenson, Managing Director, Fujitsu India
Some edited excerpts from an interview:

What are some of the biggest growth drivers for IoT in India?
In India, especially, we can see IoT being adopted across different sectors like ESDM, mobile devices, and mainly the Digital India initiative. One of the main agenda under Digital India is smart cities, and the Indian government plans to use almost 1.6 bn connected things by this year according to Gartner. In the larger cities, the cost of management, energy, and maintenance can be extensively brought down with the implementation of IoT.

At present, India has the 3rd largest smartphone market in the world, and is expected to progress from 200 million Internet users in 2013 to 500 million by 2017. This growth will soon be extended to other devices as well, and with the ease with which IoT connects devices like PC, tablets, cars, and wearables, IoT can be expected to be the largest device market. All in all, the digital transformation going on in India will be one of the biggest contributors of growth for IoT in India.

How do you see the market opportunity for IoT?
With the focus on Digital in India both from the government and across industries, there will be a huge market opportunity for IoT, especially in industries such as Manufacturing, Agriculture, Enterprise IT, Health and Public Safety. We are already seeing the first movers already testing out and implementing the first projects – and we envisage that as the benefits are realized, a larger proportion of enterprises will too move into the mainstream.

IoT paves the way for the Digital Transformation which is a radical, disruptive business transformation enabled by the technologies of the Internet of Things. We at Fujitsu are excited about the enormous potential that Digital Transformation presents to change the entire business landscape for many of our customers and what this means for their ability to compete. We recommend that companies get started now, while it is a competitive advantage, by working on a digitalized value chain. Digital Transformation is possible in most industries, as the technologies (e.g. IoT) are readily available and progress is mostly limited by the capability to produce innovative business ideas.

Earlier in 2015, we also launched ‘The Fujitsu Cloud IoT Platform’ which utilizes data from different digital business platforms, sensors and disparate sources. With high-speed processing of massive data, optimized performance, and support for variety of sensors and devices, this platform service is dedicated to for building and providing complete range of functions needed for the IoT, on Fujitsu’s public cloud. Apart from this, Fujitsu has already delivered city wide Transportation Management solutions, Environmental Monitoring solutions, Disaster Warning solutions and Smart Agriculture solutions.

Can you give us some examples of your clients in India who are using your IoT solutions?
Some of the world’s leading commercial aircraft manufacturers use Fujitsu’s RFID based IoT solutions to manage their global supply chain for spares and replacements. For example, it is mandatory to replace the life jackets kept beneath each seat as per safety parameters set by civil aviation authorities. Earlier, this meant tracking the amount of flights these vests have made, checking physically their deployment date as printed on them, and replacing them. When in a hangar, this entire process took quite some time, as anyone can imagine. RFID tagging means that now maintenance crew walks the aisles of each aircraft with RFID readers, and replaces only the vests which signal that it needs to be replaced.
This example is quite specific, but today it extends to virtually all spares on aircrafts – ensuring possibility of a global monitoring command and control centre, and far more efficient supply chain.

How do you see the future for adoption of a technology like IoT in India?
IoT no longer remains a concept or a possibility but a reality. A country like India, which is rapidly developing and already at the precipice of connectivity and mobility, can reap humungous benefits from IoT as it brings about the convergence of various feature like hardware, big data, cloud, IT, and connectivity. Moreover, with IoT being an integral part of the Smart Cities initiative, the technology will be instrumental in driving the growth of nation and enhancing the quality of life.