Sunil K Sonare

Challenges of Implementing IoT (Internet of Things) in India

The concept of the internet of things (IoT) is based on the technology, in which the millions of
heterogeneous devices are seamlessly connected with internet and its vital information are stored,
monitored and controlled remotely with the sensors installed on it. The rapid changes in economy and
technology, the various industrial sectors i.e. manufacturing, utilities, automotive, transportation &
logistics are harnessing its potential. The developments of IoT implementation are not good as expected
in India, only few companies are adopting these technologies.

The digital space and recent technology development in the world with the advancement of
technologies, data and information become the fuel of the economy. The data and information are
using for the purpose of the predictive analysis and decision making. The various sensor using to deploy
the IoT Solutions in various industries and helping the technical and business leaders in perspective of
improving the design, product features, business growth etc. It require a such revolutionary technology
which provides anytime seamless connection among the sensors of different home appliances is
internet of Things (IOT

The IoT shall be able to integrate transparently and seamlessly a large number of different
heterogeneous devices, while providing open access to selected subsets of data for the development of
a large scale of digital services. To build a general architecture of IoT for gigantic projects such as smart
cities, The remotely spread-out devices connection, are very complex because of the extremely large
variety of devices, link layer technologies, protocols and services that are involved in such a system.
IoT is often associated with various automation and empowered the heterogeneous devices by the
integration of sensors, transmitters and receivers which helps the application to collect, consolidate,
analyze and take the design in an efficient manner for instance if a smart vehicle captures the drivers
behaviors, fuel consumption during varying speed make a co-relation between the standard defined
parameters and then it can smartly manage its internal setting of engines and other parts to avoid
accidents to save human life and save the fuel and in turn move towards the profitability.

The advantages of using IoT in various industries can be listed.

 Data: The continuous stream of data receiving through the various sensors are available in the form
of information and help to make the fast decisions.
 Monitoring: The remote monitoring of the devices through mobile and computers are easy and thus
controlling of the devices will be done from remote.
 Time: The time saving for the decision making and monitoring is good else it will be tremendous.
 Finance: The financial aspects are best advantages, else there are need to depend on human on
data collection and monitoring.

The IoT have few disadvantages too.

 Sensor Compatibility: There are still no standardization of the sensors and still its dependency on
vendors, which sensors to be used and how the data to be fetched.
 Complex Architecture: The various sensors deployment on a single device, and connected through
network and sending the data to cloud.
 Security: The security of data are biggest concern, as data encryption possibilities are negligible
through the sensors on the devices. It can cause the big security threat and breach and may lead to
losses may be in IP, Financial etc.
Major Challenges in India

There are so many basic problems and challenges of Indian IoT consumers that is why IoT adoption in
Indian Companies and Organization would be very slow. Some of these IoT adoptions challenges are
Lake of Standardization, data security issues, data storage and ownership issues, return on investment,
etc., these are really not unique to India. Apart from these challenges, IoT in India would consider with
some other challenges are as given below.

 Internet availability: Even today Internet connectivity, Internet connection reliability and availability
of required connection bandwidth are still a major challenge in India. The density of the internet
connection and users are very low in India and telco are still struggling to provide required
bandwidth internet connection in remote areas and an IoT consumer adoption – this can remain
most important challenge.
 Cost of IoT : Indians consumers in respect of any technology are very selective in terms of
investment on convenience and technology Even some products such as smart wearable fitness
bands are yet to take off in India, and price is a major factor.
 Lack of vendor activity: Global vendors are generally or by mistaken assume that Indian consumers
are not ready for advance devices or product. This is very much obvious in case of adoption of
technology and IoT space, with rarely any kind of vendor activity today. This led to low level of
awareness of IoT Systems among the Indian consumers.
 Overall infrastructure challenges: Not only the internet but the supporting infrastructure such as
Smart power grids, Smart drainage/ sanitation System, Smart Water Supply etc., which are
indistinguishable part of a life of citizens and these are far from being ready to use in India.
 Lack of skilled resource in India: IoT adoption is also constrained by the unavailability of skilled
workforce for implementation of nationwide IoT enabled systems. According to the report of Labor
Bureau Report of 2016 the skilled workforce in India is only two percent of total population, which is
much lower when compared to some other developing nations. So there is need to introduce some
educational programs that helps the workforce to learn these technology and meet the
requirements in order to support the growing ecosystem.

The some risk factors, which are a big threat since one year also making some hurdles in adopting the
IoT in India, are hacking and data ownership. With the increase in Ransomware since few years, the
security is biggest threat and if any devices are attacked by hackers and controlled by them, and make
its harsh usage will lead in to the big losses to the organization. The second big risk will be data
ownership, if the IoT based application running on cloud servers, the ownership of received data on
servers through these sensors from the device are still not have clarity.

In spite of that, in India with the penetration of internet connectivity and some adoption of technologies
in Indian companies my attract the IoT implementation and take a pace from year 2020.