Chennai: Creating an IoT product is simple. One needs to make the electronic items connect, interact and exchange data with eachother and be able to control them over the Internet.
The Indian market has a great potential for IoT, thanks to its very large population. Founder of Eden, a startup, Pranjal Kacholia believes that IoT in India is still in its baby steps. Speaking with News Today, he talks about the his firm and the benefits of IoT.
The idea
‘About two years back, while researching on this, I realized that India had very limited IoT startups, particularly in home automation space, thanks to our strong aversion to building manufacturing startups,’ says Pranjal. ‘To explore the market, I called a vendor of a global smarthome company and found that many firms didn’t really understand the IoT market,’ he said.
‘The distributors were just quoting a random price. They have nothing to verify,’ he adds. Soon Pranjal decided to start his own IoT venture.
‘I started researching more,’ says Pranjal. ‘I formed a team of four engineers and we started researching on developing an indigenous low-cost smart homes solution.’
Manufacturing IoT
Pranjal and his team then had the task to commercialize their products after months of researching. They came up with a lean manufacturing system.
‘To procure raw material, we handpicked small unknown vendors across India, who provided us high quality components at extremely low cost,’ he says. ‘We believe that startups with small investments can develop into a high quality manufacturing firm.’
About his product
Pranjal explains that a small hardware module is installed behind the switchboards of a house, making the appliances mobile-enabled. ‘You can control fans, lights, AC, etc, using a mobile app or through voice commands from anywhere in the world,’ says Pranjal. An app guides the user to control the connected devices.
Benefits
‘We live in a time where everything is becoming mobile-enabled. IoT has the potential to change the day-to-day life of every middle class household in India,’ says Pranjal. ‘Smart homes can help elderly people control fans, TVs or lights by just using their phones.’
The future
‘Our products are priced at a cost that is just a fraction, when compared to other global products,’ says Pranjal. He signs off by saying, ‘We plan to sell it(his electronic device) via local entrepreneurs in every city, so it becomes accessible to everyone.’
Pranjal at present has distributors based at Gujarat, Kerala and Odisha, apart from Chennai and plans to target Rs 200 crore in two to three years.
| Numbers game |
| * By 2020, the IoT market in India is poised to reach $15 billion. * India will account to five per cent of the total global market by 2020. * Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeiTY) has published a draft IoT policy to ensure Indian startups captures five to six per cent share of the market. |