India poised to lead IoT industry, says IT Secretary

India understands the potential of technology and should aspire for nothing less than a leadership role when it comes to adopting Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem to improve efficiencies across sectors, a senior bureaucrat said here on Wednesday.

Launching the second edition of the 'IoT India Congress 2017', Information Technology Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said with the two largest industries -- information technology (IT) and telecom -- that power the IoT industry, India is poised to become a winner in this space.

"The capabilities in entrepreneurship in different sectors, the aspirational and second-to-none startup community in India and the young demographics makes me optimistic that India can forge ahead in this direction," Sundarajan told reporters here.

Conceptualised, designed and organised by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) India, the IoT India Congress is country's largest platform for accelerating business outcomes in IoT.

The global IoT market is set to exceed $300 billion by 2020 and with almost 1.9 billion devices to be connected to the internet in India by 2023, Indian IoT market is forcast to secure 20 per cent of the global IoT business ecosystem to reach nearly $15 billion in next three years.

Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairman IET-IoT Panel and Organising Committee, IoT India Congress 2017, mentioned a Gartner report, informing that 8.4 million devices will be connected in 2017 -- 31 per cent more than last year.

"This is a phenomenal pace of growth of IoT devices and the current need is for industries to be technologically equipped to ride on this wave to be able to gain maximum out of it," said Bhatnagar during one of the panel discussions.

Shekhar Sanyal, Director and country head of the IET, said that the IET India IoT panel understands the need to create sentience and increase participation from the stakeholders in the IoT value chain.

"Led by the volunteers, the IET India IoT Panel is working to influence the future of IoT, which will change the way we interact and do business," Sanyal added.

--IANS

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