Focus on delivering locational intelligence from IoT solutions: Insights from YourStory and MediaTek’s IoT meet up

‘Clicking a BUY NOW button for ordering a product from home and getting it delivered to your doorstep is just one of the myriad examples of IoT being used for solving inefficiencies in a business’ day-to-day operations. In this case, the product company can derive benefits from location intelligence and answer questions like

a) Region/area where maximum transactions are happening

b) How does it relate with distribution to physical stores

c) What is the co-relation on the OOH (Out Of Home) campaigns and the connected product?

Once we get around to enabling ‘dark assets’ with IoT and especially, with location-based intelligence solutions, which was the theme at YourStory’s IoT meetup in Pune last Thursday, in association with MediaTek Labs India, sectors like supply chain, logistics, wearables, security, and automotive stand to be the quickest and biggest gainers because they will become more efficient, secure, transparent, and eventually, witness new business models.

Here's a quick rundown of the global in numbers:

$15 billion is the expected industry turnover by 2020

80 billion would be the number of connected devices by 2020Infinite would be the number of possibilities of IoT and what it can accomplish

100 were the number of technophiles gathered in the room that were looking forward to some spoilers on just how far or close we are to, for instance, the age of connected cars or parking lots that we can zoom in and out of within seconds.

For those of you who missed out, here are the most valuable insights imparted by Kunal A Bhat of Tech Mahindra, Ashish Bedekar of MediaTek Labs India, Sagar Apte of CarIQ, and Puneet Sharma, of Zone Startups India and the RISE Accelerator program.

Kunal A Bhat: “It’s not just about location, it’s about contextual information.”

Providing insight on the landscape of location intelligence applications and their potential, Kunal A Bhat, Principal Consultant, Innovations Department, Tech Mahindra, points out that location intelligence alone is only half-the-battle won. The location details collected is one step of the way; your information must be contextual and hence, actionable. For example, in a disaster-struck area looking to receive rescue and help, it does not just suffice to know where the disaster has occurred — you also have to understand the extent and nature of the damage, the best routes to get there, the exact landscape of healthcare in the area, etc. Thus, in order to make sense of data, location-based IoT solutions must be backed by all-round intelligence.

Ashish Bedekar: “‘Where is the journey from opinion to decision.”

Stating that IoT is the marriage of the real world with the cyber world, Ashish Bedekar, Head of MediaTek Labs, India, used a Rudyard Kipling analogy to best sum up the importance of location in IoT.

“I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.”

Out of this, ‘where’ is an indispensable element, the source of the action, the facet that will get one to go from opinions to decision” he said. In case of any location focused solution e.g asset tracking solutions or kids trackers, the GPS- GNSS capability in the device captures the location and uploads it to the cloud back end via GSM /WiFi connectivity. Once you have adequate parametric data available, locational intelligence insights can be gathered using Big Data/ Analytics . So the hardware plays a critical role in delivering an end-to-end solution.

Sagar Apte, Co-founder of CarIQ: “The money is in the insight, not in the device.”

While speaking about the challenges that an average bootstrapped startup undergoes in prototyping, Sagar Apte pointed out an important distinction. Stating that devices are getting cheaper by the day, he warns the startups eyeing the IoT pie must be poised to handle the deluge of data that IoT-enabled devices will induce, because the real money is not in having connected devices but in how you plan to capitalize on the information collected. “The real stuff is happening at the software level,” he lets on.