Unlimit’s India IoT revenue to touch $300-400 mn in four years: CEO Juergen Hase

Unlimit, part of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, expects annual revenue from its Internet of Things operations in India to touch $300-400 million in the next four years, a top executive said.

“We expect to hit a number close to $400 million as total revenue from our Indian IoT operations buoyed by the growth and interest in the new technology,” Juergen Hase, chief executive of Unlimit IoT told TechCircle during an interview in Delhi.

According to a report by industry body Nasscom, the IoT market in India is poised to reach $15 billion by 2020, accounting for nearly 5% of the total global market.

Unlimit, which started operations in July 2016, offers end-to-end solutions and services such as managed connectivity, application platform and device management, and advanced analytics for enterprises across industries.

Unlimit’s partners

According to Hase, Unlimit operates with partners in different areas to provide specific solutions. Last month, the company partnered with state telecom service provider BSNL for its connectivity services.

“While at one end, we have network partners such as BSNL, on the other, we have partners such as Cisco Jasper, Software AG and IBM Watson,” Hase said.

A large-scale IoT network needs six to seven platforms to deploy services. While Cisco Jasper provides the connectivity layer, Software AG provides the dashboard for monitoring the network and IBM Watson helps with analytics, Hase explained.

Unlimit has a total of 360 partners, of which 20% of these are startups.

Services and solutions

Unlimit offers solutions such as Unlimit Control, Unlimit Enablement and Unlimit Insights to verticals such as automotive, banking, financial services and insurance, energy, manufacturing, logistics and transportation along with any company that wants to match Industry 4.0 standards.

While Control is a connection management platform, Enablement is a device and application management platform and Insights is the BigData and analytics platform solution.

“Control allows you to connect to IoT devices in your network reliably and monitor them but Enablement lets you build, develop and then deploy smart connected solutions using the IoT devices,” Hase explained.

Sector use cases

Within the automotive sector, Unlimit is working on connected vehicles solutions in the two, three and four-wheeler segment. It has emergency car services, content distribution networks and WiFi hotspots ready for deployment.

For the automotive industry, the company uses sensors and hardware such as on-board diagnostics system; vehicle tracking; telematic control units to capture, control and transmit data, manage connectivity, dashboarding, reporting and alerting using basic to advanced analytics, Hase explained. He added that Unlimit will soon announce major solutions and partnerships in the automobile space.

Besides the automotive segment, Unlimit's services can be deployed on the shop floor of manufacturing plants as well as in logistics and financial services.

In the Industry 4.0 segment, IoT can be deployed for predictive maintenance on the shop floor mainly in manufacturing plants.

In logistics, Unlimit’s IoT solutions can be used for tracking deliveries, freight control, performance management, supply chain management and warehouse management. A similar setup could also be used for the BFSI sector, Hase explained.

For financial services, Unlimit’s IoT solutions use sensors to capture data, actuators to control assets and gateways to transmit data. It also provides connectivity management, dashboarding, generates reports and alerts and offers basic to advanced analytics.

Besides the above, Unlimit also caters to the energy and solar energy segments for the transmission of power, and the retail sector.

The company, which competes with Aeris Communications, Airtel and a few other startups such as HAL Robotics, has 30 to 35 customers, Hase said.

Challenges

According to analysts that TechCircle spoke to, while India will soon become a huge IoT market, IoT solution providers such as Unlimit will face difficulties raking in big numbers.

“While India is expected to see a 60X growth in the number of internet-connected devices and the dollar value of IoT is expected to grow 40X conservatively, application of IoT in India is still at a nascent stage,” Manav Sachdeva, senior research analyst at Gartner India, said.

Sachdeva further said that IoT was being used in the insurance, automotive and retail space to offer incremental changes to consumer experiences to increase the stickiness of products or services.

“Soon, consumers will get tired of these gimmicks and turn away from these experiences. What the industry needs to do is to develop solutions which the customer wants or will be very crucial for their day-to-day lives,” he explained. For example, an essential segment that is missing the IoT wave in the country is healthcare.