As a developing nation, India holds great promise in digital technology-based solutions. The Indian economy is witnessing a slew of transformations and policy changes enabling businesses across the world to invest in the vast Indian market, which effectively has led to India becoming the fifth largest world economy in the world, leaving behind France and the UK. Global companies like Foxconn, Apple Inc., Samsung, etc. are manufacturing smartphones and other gadgets in India and exporting to other countries.
Recently, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully landed the much-awaited Chandrayaan-3 lander Vikram and rover Pragyan at the Moon’s south pole surface, the first such successful mission globally. As a developing nation, India is the fastest-growing world economy and according to the World Bank, India will become the world’s third-largest economy after China and USA, by 2050.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has a great role to play in India as India offers a great market for digital technologies in various business and personal spaces.
In retail, logistics and supply chains, manufacturing, healthcare, education, utility, etc., the Internet of Things technology is used for connecting physical items to the digital world and sharing data over the Internet. Various cyber-physical systems (CPSs) can be developed using IoT devices. It can also create smart factories enabling smart manufacturing with the help of CPS and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other industry 4.0 technologies.
The Internet of Things in India at Present
The concept of the Internet of Things has evolved from machine-to-machine communication (M2M) to an overarching internet of everything. Kevin Ashton independently coined the word IoT in 1999 when he was working extensively on RFID and set up the MIT-Auto ID center with his partners Sanjay Sarma, David Brock, Daniel Engels, and Sunny Siu. The concept of IoT has evolved since then to a great extent.
At present, IoT means smart devices that use one of the wireless standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, BLE, UWB, LoRaWAN, etc. to interconnect and share information over the internet. Things like a smartphone, a smartwatch sharing your blood glucose levels on your smartphone, a light bulb that you can turn off using a mobile app, etc.
In India, the smartphone penetration is at 71% in 2023 which is expected to reach 96% by 2040 (Statista). With 71% of 1.4 billion people using smartphones, the IoT market in India has reached 27.31B USD in 2023 of which 8.31 billion USD share is due to automotive Internet of Things. And it makes sense given that the automotive industry is still growing rapidly and people want to experience lots of IoT features in their vehicles. The industrial IoT market accounts for 9.67 billion USD and given the demand for manufacturing and industrial production going up, it is further expected to reach 21.78 billion USD by 2028.
Industrial IoT in India is revolutionizing industrial growth in India while ensuring high production, preventive maintenance, and workers’ safety altogether. The large amount of data generated on a day-to-day basis is captured and stored by various IoT technologies including RFID, BLE, LoRaWAN, etc. This data is further cleaned and analyzed by AI and ML technologies for better insights and reports on industrial production, safety, supply chain, logistics, etc.
Consumer IoT, smart city IoT, smart finance IoT, and healthcare IoT are some of the other prominent IoT market verticals driving the IoT demands in India. With IoT becoming a part of lifestyle globally, Indians are quickly adopting IoT in fashion, travel and finance, healthcare, security, etc. City administrations are using IoT technology to enable smart metering, waste management, water and energy management, and smart healthcare for citizens as well.
The Future of Internet of Things in India
Given the huge unsaturated market for the automotive industry, industrial manufacturing, healthcare, etc., and with favorable policy changes by the Indian government in the past couple of years, India is deemed to become the global industrial hub. With 1.4 billion strong consumers, consumer IoT, automotive IoT, and healthcare IoT are also bound to grow strong in upcoming years. By 2028, the Indian IoT market is expected to reach 59.99 billion USD, of which 21.78 billion USD would account for industrial IoT and 21.26 billion USD for automotive IoT. The consumer IoT is also expected to reach 5.55 billion USD.
The Internet of Things is one of the prominent industry 4.0 technologies, driving manufacturing supply chain and retail businesses globally and that is why the IoT market is witnessing a CAGR of over 16% over a period of 10 years (2018-2028). With the global semiconductor shortage slowing down the market supply chain and growth (pre-pandemic levels), the IoT demand in industry, security, and smart city projects is still on the rise. With more Indians adopting a tech-savvy lifestyle including smart homes, wearables, smart travel, etc., IoT is unstoppable.
To conclude, the internet of Things market in India is witnessing a rapid growth rate, CAGR of 17.05% between 2023-2028 which is more than the global IoT CAGR of 16%. Indians are tech savvy and with the world’s largest country by population, mostly young, India is the best bet in IoT developments and IoT-led industrial, medical, supply chain and manufacturing, retail, and smart city development and IoT promotions as well.
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