Think about this. You finish your workout and walk toward your car and it ‘knows’ you’re approaching. The door opens by itself, allowing you to get in and connect to various devices right away. This may seem straight out of a James Bond movie, but the seeds of such technology have already been sown and will soon bear fruit.
The coming revolution
True power to the people is the result of technology making lives easier and enabling decisions. Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore are all host to technology pilots that can start what is called the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution. Devices and networks have converged voice, text, images and video to connect the entire world. IoT simplified is nothing but a network connecting several devices on a real-time basis to share information and generate data that could be used by consumers, business institutions and government to interact and benefit from each other.
India’s most successful civilian drone startup called IdeaForge has won government contracts to connect the police on a real-time basis to react to riots and natural calamities. Similarly, the two-year-old robotics startup, Gade Autonomous Systems, is building robots to work as home assistants.
The communication between homes and cars to fitness bands and drones to robots and industrial machines - and finally to government services on the cloud - is shaping the future of the planet. In short, Smart Cities are a reality and the government wants to spend billions to change the life of ordinary Indians. The technology is here to stay but the question is: who will own the data and provide security to consumers of IoT? More importantly, is society at large ready to adopt it? Whatever may be the case, there are some who are already daring others to switch to a connected way of life.
A walk in the park
Early in the morning, parks in several cities are filled with people using fitness bands that connect to their smartphones. Tracking heart rate, steps, calories and time taken to complete exercise tasks, the various data sets sync with a relevant app on the phone, supplemented by the dietary data of the user. All this data, which is collated in the cloud, is quickly analysed by the service provider to determine an individual’s fitness activity. This data, when used by insurance companies, is a gold mine for their new business incomes and renewal premium growth. “Our plan is to offer the best devices that can change lives and our smartwatch is a step in that direction,” says Rick Osterloh, president and COO, Motorola Mobility. There are several startups that are using the Android and iOS platforms to build apps on devices. Startups that are run by Mohammed Hussain Naseem, who owns “GetActive”, Vishal Gondal, who owns “GoQii” and Tushar Vashisht, who owns “HealthifyMe” are collating data of fitness habits across cities and making it big business. They are doing far more than just promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Their larger goal is to connect several stakeholders to make the ecosystem more transparent. “It is important that the ecosystem of hospitals, insurance companies and consumers works with data specific to individuals to deliver better care,” says Naseem of GetActive. GoQii and HealthifyMe bring in nutritionists, yoga and physical experts to motivate users to achieve fitness goals. All three have been funded. GetActive has raised money from T.V. Mohandas Pai, a former member of the Infosys leadership team; GoQii too has raised an undisclosed angel round from Neeraj Arora of WhatsApp Inc. and Marco Argenti from Amazon Web Services.
The dream drive
Things are changing in other ways too. Today your phone can double up as a key, if your car’s protocols are on an app. The Mahindra Reva E20 is one such car, loaded with all sorts of connected features. The app gives the user information on the car’s diagnostics, on a real-time basis, and also predicts maintenance requirements. And, yes, you can open the car’s doors with a phone. Go a step further and use a diagnostic tool of the startup, CarIQ, retrofitted to track the wellness of the car. A car worth Rs. 8 lakh has over 30 sensors embedded in its systems and captures information on brakes, suspension, engine and tyres in a storage unit within it. CarIQ’s tool captures this information on their cloud and pushes it to an app. “Car manufacturers can use this data, which is also in the hands of the customer, to request their dealerships to be more transparent about their maintenance services,” says Sagar Apte, founder of CarIQ in Pune. CarIQ has raised an angel round of $500,000 from Snow Leopard Technology Ventures. Imagine if this data could be made available to the government to build services around traffic and disaster management services. It is no coincidence, then, that there’s an Indian connection to another startup that is connecting government services to car drivers, on a pilot basis, for the entire city of Ann Arbor in Michigan, USA.
Savari Networks, a startup founded by Sridhar Reddy, Faroog Ibrahim, Paul Sakamoto and Ravi Puvvala, has received a grant from the US Department of Transportation to retrofit all cars in the Ann Arbor area with their device. The technology allows the government to platoon cars away from a traffic jam or a disaster area. Savari installs Wi-Fi-based devices across the city, operating them on behalf of the government. The government will use Savari’s platform to pull drivers’ data and push messages back to a receiving unit in the car. “Messages will show up on the telematics screen of the car and will inform drivers on primary civil activity in the city,” says Sridhar Reddy, MD of Savari Networks India R&D centre.
From India to the world
The management of information, telecom and data infrastructure will be taken up by an IT Services vendor like Wipro, Infosys or TCS. If the Indian government so wishes, this technology can be used in India immediately. However, the government must invest first in IT infrastructure and charge consumers like it does for utilities.
In Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions Limited (RBEI) in Bangalore, the world’s connected vehicles are already being built. The 10,000-member-strong engineering team is building cars on an Ethernet-based platform that can connect to any proprietary telecom or Wi-Fi network. The Cadillac XTS, a brand owned by General Motors, and its entire connected platform uses smart navigation, where you can mirror the map on the windshield of a car, to guide the driver across a city. Bosch has a ready commercial product that ships to General Motors.
All the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) has to do is sign a contract with a telecom company and sell services on mobile phones that connect with cars. Bosch has also created an app that can mirror the entire mobile device on to the telematics screen. From cars to homes, the effort to win the consumer over continues.
Say hello to smart homes!
Today’s homes can be connected through devices (cars and mobiles) to get you ready for work. Along with Bosch, Philips and GE are also creating connected home and health platforms to track the daily lifecycle of an individual. Now you can even programme food from your car. Connected grills from Bosch Hausgeräte, a subsidiary of Bosch’s, can help an individual use the phone to pre-programme a meal, based on travel time, for it to be ready when you get home. This works only if you do some hard work before leaving home, though, for the grill to take over later.
Also available is an energy management system that powers the lights in your home. Startups like Cilantro Technologies are illuminating the way. Lights and air conditioning systems are managed through the device, on a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth network, to save energy. The device also captures reports on areas where most energy is being consumed. Xiaomi, the Chinese technology startup, has smart home devices like the air purifier and smart TVs that can connect with mobile devices. “There will be several platforms that connect and collect data and standards on how the consumer will share data with various stakeholders trying to push services to him or her,” says Satish R.M, principal research analyst at Gartner.
The company forecasts that 4.9 billion connected things will be in use in 2015, up 30 percent from 2014, to reach 25 billion by 2020.
The future, by IoT
IoT has become a powerful force for business transformation, and its disruptive impact will be felt across all industries and all areas of society. “The digital shift instigated by the nexus of forces (cloud, mobile, social and information), and boosted by IoT, threatens many existing businesses. They have no choice but to pursue IoT, like they’ve done with the consumerisation of IT,” says Jim Tully, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. This expansion will boost the economic impact of IoT as consumers, businesses, city authorities, hospitals and other entities find new ways to exploit technology.
Gartner estimates that IoT will support total services spending of $69.5 billion in 2015 and $263 billion by 2020. Cisco, for example, is betting big on India with its venture fund. It has invested in several firms, but it is its investment in Covacsis that makes it unique. As yet undisclosed, it is rumoured to be to the tune of $10 million. Covacsis’s IoT platform is embedded in machines and collects data on a single layer. Cisco’sWi-fi routers and networks transport that to a factory’s data centre for analytics and preventive maintenance to help factories understand production patterns and improve lifecycle of machines.“IoT is not going to be the monopoly of one single player, the world is heading towards a collaborative business era,” says Joydeep Bose, Managing Director of Cisco Investments.
However, no one has figured out a functional business model for IoT yet. Smart Cities will need transparent systems, amid national debates on privacy. A company owning all the data can create complex challenges for IoT regulation. However, incremental benefits in factories and city management can be enormous but the ultimate power rests with consumers.
