India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Bangalore, commenced the two day IoTNext 2017 Summit. The event showcased a 100% growth in the 2nd edition of the Start-up IoT Directory, launched with IoTForum. The Directory includes 900 start-ups, working in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) across the nation. It has been compiled with support from NASSCOM, IoT CoE, IIT Mumbai, SINE, IKP EDEN, Revxx, IoTBLR,T-Hub, Forge and Excubator.
With a focus on New Perspectives & Fresh Thinking on IoT Security, the mega summit is expected to attract over 1000 participants, visionaries and stakeholders on a common platform. It will showcase innovations at the IoT Hack Fest, with symposiums to discuss and debate leading topics to foster an ecosystem to promote start-ups that develop fabless semiconductor and electronic products especially around connected devices or in the IoT space. It will address key challenges faced by the industry and build strategy for scalable, secure and efficient IoT implementation, by determining which new technologies will drive IoT to the next development stage. It will also focus on the start-up ecosystem by upskilling the workforce in the field of IoT with workshops on new technologies like LoRa and Julia Scientific computing.
This year, the summit will deep-dive into two market verticals and two horizontal technologies and also explore fresh thinking and strategies for leapfrogging that India could explore. The theme for this year is, ‘Beyond the Hype: Pilots to Scale’ including keynotes by distinguished speakers. Dr. Martin Scott, PhD, CTO and Sr. VP, Security Division, Rambus, Rahul Bedi, Sr. Director, Internet of Things Group, Intel and Frank Thiel, VP and GM, Microsemi talked about the transformational journey of IoT, highlighting the various opportunities it created for the manufacturing landscape in India.
Speaking on the occasion, Ashwini K Aggarwal, Chairman, IESA said, “We are encouraged by the success of the previous editions in bringing together the industry stakeholders. The start-up ecosystem in India has already reached great heights and with the support of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics the growth in this space has been exponential. Last year, we had about 500 start-ups listed in our directory and now the number has reached to 1000 start-ups in the IoT field, in just one year. IESA Innovation Initiative – leveraging Industry CSR and Best-in-class models from the world – is looking at direct industry intervention at academia-incubator-startup level to enable the Indian IoT hardware ecosystem. We would like to take this to at least another 100 percent growth that it is currently witnessing.”
Ravi Gururaj, President, TiE Bangalore said “The Indian government has already been active in making the nation more digitally enabled with its laudable initiatives such as Digital India, Smart City etc. By welcoming automated technologies such as artificial intelligence, this effort is further boosting their vision of a ‘Digital India’. We are proud that India is moving the ante towards innovation and we are happy to contribute and support IoT entrepreneurs and further strengthen the ecosystem.”
The Summit will see an array of panels covering ‘A connected life – Explore Home, Car, Work, Public and Personal spaces and IOT in each space’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence & Analytics’, addressing Logistics and Transportation challenges by BlackBuck, Loginext as well as solutions from Hyperloop and OlaPlay. The evening of Day 1 will culminate with the IoTNext awards promoting start-ups and entrepreneurs in fabless semiconductor and electronic products in the IoT or connected devices space.
Further, with automation in full swing of creating an evolutionary disruption in the industry, it is imperative to define a growth path for the emerging markets across verticals and help them to be at par with the established players in the industry. Encouraging the development of this space, IESA and TiE will empower the start-ups to address some of the evolving business opportunities.
