Internet of Things : The Indian Scenario
POOJA GOEL, ECE II YEAR
“Anything that can be connected will be connected.”
Ever since Homo sapiens all over the globe grasped the concept behind “The Internet Of Things”,
everybody entered into a state of trance: The state of Wonderland where your fridge could tell
you it was out of milk, your coffee brewer knew when to fix you a cappuccino, your calendar
could book an Uber cab according to your scheduled meetings, your fax machine could receive
and send faxes without your intervention.
According to Gartner, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects that contain
technology embedded within which enables them to communicate, and sense or interact with their internal states or
the external environment.
In simpler terms, Internet Of Things enable billions of smart
devices to be connected through the internet, based on the
premises of cloud computing and data-gathering sensors,
thus resulting in converting everything in our life, from a
streetlight to a seaport “smart”.
The world as we know it will change by 2020 as IoT will connect 28 billion “things” to the internet, creating a potential market of $ 15 billion and that too just in India. Globally, the figures are
far more staggering, a Cisco report states that from 15 billion devices today, the world will see 50
billion devices connected via the Internet of Things by 2020. Also, the global IoT market is expected to grow from $655.8 billion to $1.7 trillion in 2020.
IoT occupies a prominent position in the "Digital India" program launched by Narendra Modi. The government has
drafted a strategic roadmap to build domain competency,
encourage budding entrepreneurs, buffer product failure,
energize research acumen, and thereby place India on the
global IoT map.
Ironically, to understand what exactly the Internet of Things
meant, the first thing I did was to surf through the various
search engines on my ‘smartphone’. Two things became absolutely clear to me:
1. If due to Globalization in 1991, the world got converted into an interconnected networking village and India saw its share of investments in the local and the national markets by a
few major Fortune-500 companies, then for the 20th century, the IoT is going to be “the next
big thing”, wherein majority of start-ups as well as well-established companies which specialize in networking and security.