NEW DELHI: Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) is set to give a major push to its enterprise business by launching commercial narrowband IoT services in the country, having conducted pilots in Kochi, Kerala, Jaipur, Bangalore and Chennai for various use cases including smart metering. With the launch, it is now aiming higher growth for the IoT business, which grew 70% on year.
It will take its narrow-band Internet of Things (IoT) pan-India in the next 12 months with an aim to get a major chunk of the market, which is set to reach Rs 5000 crore in the next three years.
“Before the first quarter, we are looking at tapping specific opportunities in smart city and other specific applications…we have been setting up the NB-IoT network with various devices and partners for testing of things like smart water, meters, asset tracking, cold chain monitoring, smart parking and wearables,” Nick Gliddon, Chief Enterprise Business Officer at VIL told ET in an exclusive interaction.
The executive said that VIL is focusing on NB-IoT because it is a global GSMA standard, thereby it will help bring the device cost down.
Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio had last year launched a narrowband IoT network with commercial network available in Mumbai. Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel too is conducting NB-IoT pilots and is planning to launch commercial services soon.
VIL is taking a partner-led approach to build a complete ecosystem around its NB-IoT network in India. It already has 25 partners, and expect to have around 50 partners soon to build new use cases around the new technology.
For the broader IoT business, VIL is aiming to take its 80-odd partner base to over 1000 in the next 12 months. “A majority of those 1000 partners will be Indian, including startups,” Gliddon said.
Within the enterprise, IoT is expected to be the growth area going forward. India's IoT market size is expected to increase about seven times — from $1.3 billion in 2016 to $9 billion — by 2020, according to consultancy firm Deloitte.
Vodafone Idea Business Services (VIBS), the enterprise arm of VIL, holds 45% IoT market share in the cellular IoT space, according to Frost & Sullivan.
“We are creating an ecosystem in India because it is a different market. Things like agriculture, environment monitoring will build cases specific to India,” Gliddon said, adding that VIL has all of its enterprise data hosted in the country.

The executive emphasized on creating a device ecosystem for NB-IoT, and said that device availability will bring scale and will help the market to grow.

“We are building partnerships to build NB-IoT devices. We are also working with chipset partners and are sharing test results of tests and pilots for better battery results,” he added.

VIL is also launching a platform for startups that can come and create application which can then be deployed quickly on our network. “It’s like an open platform on which applications can be put on the VIL platform and others can use it. Companies can come with their devices and use the IoT store. This is to build use cases for NB-IoT and help build specifications,” he added.

The executive said that for VIL smart cities will drive growth, along with verticals like smart meters, automotive, tracking and utilities. “The Introduction of GST has changed the way supply chains work, and it will drive growth.”

Source: gadgetsnow.com