Hooked to everything
Why large Indian enterprises, startups and global service providers
are tapping into the Internet of Things opportunity
An NCR based two wheeler company tracks its fleet of trucks across
the length and breadth of the country using GPS technology. Another Chennai
based auto manufacturer is toying with the thought of launching connected
vehicles. The company also tracks pollution levels and productivity across its
shop floors using connected devices. Technology companies and hospitals are
talking about how doctors will be able to monitor sugar levels of diabetic
patients real-time in the near future. That's what the Internet of Things (IoT)
is all about.
After surpassing the human population on the planet in 2011,
internet-connected devices are expected to number between 26 billion and 50
billion globally by 2020. These devices, which in the past could only be
thought to be mobile phones, laptops and desktops, now include ATM machines,
gas pipelines, street lights, transportation vehicles and even the soil that is
used for agriculture.
This highly interconnected world is something that the industry
calls Internet of Things--a new industry that the Indian government expects to
cross $15 billion by 2020. As per market research firm Gartner, the total
revenue generated from the IoT industry would be $300 billion and the number of
connected devices would be 27 billion by 2020 globally. It has been assumed
that India would have a share of 5-6% of global IoT industry. To support this
industry, the government has already come out with a draft IoT policy that aims
at building an entire ecosystem around IoT and to incentivise the players in
the ecosystem. Experts believe this is a step in the right direction as enterprises
in every industry vertical are looking at IoT to solve their business problems.
“IoT can generate a lot of value for every industry be it
manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, or even agriculture. It is helping
enterprises not only reduce costs, energy consumption and downtime of machines,
but also significantly improve efficiency and customer service,“ says Ganesh
Ramamoorthy, Research Vice President at Gartner.
Take for example Hero MotoCorp. The largest two-wheeler company in
the country needed a way to improve its visibility on the fleet of vehicles
that are available in different locations so that the dealer clearly knows by
when certain vehicles would be available. “We started with GPS-enabling our
fleet and getting real time data of truck location and linking that with our
sales and distribution data to take actions as may be required. This also
helped our dealers and sales teams to get real time information on location of
goods,“ says Vijay Sethi, Vice PresidentInformation Systems & CIO, Hero MotoCorp.
Similarly, Hindustan Petroleum is using IoT to automate many of
its processes and create real-time insights into the business. The company has
installed sensors in field units to capture information such as temperature,
pressure, flow rates, density, product levels, GPS coor dinates, condition of
devices, speed and other physical attributes. “These systems enable us to
operate our facilities efficiently and provide real time visibility of the
status of the condition of these systems,“ says S.T. Sathiavageeswaran,
Executive DirectorInformation Systems, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. “The
retail outlet automation systems help us to monitor the performance of our
outlets in real time and enable us to proactively attend to any issues
immediately.“
Similarly, Apollo Hospitals is using IoT to transform
healthcare.“We are exploring IoT in disease management. SUGAR is our diabetes
management initiative. Constant monitoring of the specific blood sugar levels
using disruptive IoT enabled technology and transmitting them seamlessly to our
personal health record system has been effectively piloted and is now getting
ready for wide scale usage,“ says Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director,
Apollo Hospitals. The hospital chain is also looking at IoT in effective inpatient
care, post discharge care and overall preventive health and wellness. According
to Gartner, IoT is something that needs to be seen as a business initiative by
enterprises, “IoT is not a technology initiative. It is all about business
process improvement. Enterprises need to put down their business pain points
and then look at how to resolve them with the help of IoT.“
Manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, retail, utility and power
generation are some of biggest beneficiaries from IoT, according to Arnab Basu,
Partner & Technology Sector Consultant, PwC. “It's important to note here
that IoT will work in conjunction with other technologies like analytics, data
protection, cyber security and data governance,“ he says.
Cisco is investing heavily in the space by building large teams
and localised products. “IoT has been the biggest focus area for Cisco in
India.We have increased our IoT team by five times in the last one year. We
focus primarily around the digital India program and on digitising enterprises
with the help of IoT,“ says Nalinikanth Gollagunta, managing director,
commercial sales at Cisco India & SAARC.
Apart from working with IT services companies such as Wipro,
Infosys and TCS, Cisco says most of the IoT projects now involve industrial equipment
companies such as Honeywell, Rockwell, Schneider. “In IoT, we are generally
moving away from enterprise environment and into operational environment where
typical companies such as Wipro and Infosys have little to play,“ he says.
Tata Elxsi is similarly scaling up its IoT team rapidly as it sees
this market as the next wave. “At Tata Elxsi we believe that IoT drives
fundamental changes in the way products are conceptualised by manufacturers and
utilised by customers. In the new paradigm, products serve as an extended
platform to provide services to customers,“ says RR Bipin, VP, Digital Services
IoT, Embedded Product Design Division at Tata Elxsi. He adds, “In addition to
the broader theme of smart cities, telehealth, fleet management and connected car
are some of the important verticals that we are focused on right now.“
According to IBM, the insurance sector could be the next big
adopter of IoT and would transform the way healthcare and insurance businesses
are run today. “Caring for the elderly or people with chronic illness could
become a lot easier with the help of wearable medical devices such as fitness
bands that can track your health and inform your doctor about your
deteriorating health so that steps can be taken to heal before it is too late,“
says Dr. Prashant Pradhan, director-Smarter Planet Business, IBM India.
He explains how insurance companies could give incentives to
customers for allowing them to track their fitness records from devices such as
fitness bands and then offer them proactive health tips based on the customer's
physical activities that'll not only help the customer remain fit but also save
the company millions of dollars from mediclaim. Car insurance companies
similarly may mandate customers to put sensors in your car and charge premiums
based on your driving style.
IoT provides an opportunity not only to large vendors but also a
plethora of startups who are attracting big investments. Companies such as
Cisco, IBM and Intel are using their venture funds to invest in some of these
companies to grow inorganically in the domain.
Bengaluru-based IoT startup Altimetrik is working with some of the
largest retail and FMCG companies in India to bring in efficiencies in their
business. “We try and define business outcomes and then we tell them
(customers) that for them to cause this outcome, what all data they need and
where it is residing,“ says Madhavan Satagopan, CTO at Altimetrik and a member
of Nasscom's Engineering and R&D Council. “The sensors in IoT only provide
a way for sensors in your business network to talk more and provide the
essential data. More than analytics, IoT helps companies to get real-time
correlation of events and then tie that back to the company's business
outcomes,“ he says.
Cisco launched a $40 million fund in June last year to seed
startup companies under its “India Innovation“ program, which focuses on IoT
solutions. The company has already invested in Mumbai-based Covacsis
Technologies, an enterprise software firm, and Mobstac, a cloud-based company
offering a publishing platform for mobile websites and apps and is still
scouting for more. “We are looking at startups who can provide IoT solutions in
the enterprise and government space,“ says Gollagunta.
Intel similarly is scouting for startups through its venture fund,
Intel Capital. In November, Intel Capital said it would invest $62 million in
16 technology startups working in wearables, data analytics and IoT.
Despite huge investments going into the space, experts say IoT is
still at a nascent stage in the country.There are also concerns about skillset
availability, security of data that these sensors transmit and the need to
build a regulatory framework around IoT. However, the government has already taken
positive steps by initiating an IoT policy, while industry associations such as
Nasscom and IESA are working together to suggest to the government how IoT
could be used to build the nation.
IoT at work
Leading two wheeler manufacturer, TVS Motor uses IoT for process
automation, process quality control and traceability in shop floor, pollution
control and monitoring, measurement of water flow and power consumption. The
auto maker is also working on connected vehicles. IoT has resulted in
productivity improvement, quality control, cost control and above all agility
of business.
2 ICICI Lombard General Insurance is leveraging use of telematics
in transportation solutions to minimise loss of cargo during transit of goods.
The technology is used for the benefit of customers covered under the marine
insurance policy (transporting goods by land or sea). It enables real time
tracking of goods through the transit to ensure that the carrier doesn't
deviate from the course. If there are any unscheduled stops they get reported
real time thus reducing incidents of theft, pilferage and the rate of loss.
3 Telecom tower infrastructures provider Bharti Infratel is using
IoT for management and live monitoring of its passive infrastructure like
tower, fuel management, energy distribution, alarm monitoring, surveillance on
the site and security. IoT helps the company optimise manpower, analyse data
points, trends and in fault detection.
|
By Varun Aggarwal and Sneha Jha
|
CDET10JUL15
No comments:
Post a Comment