Bengaluru city home to highest number of IoT startups in country

BENGALURU: Software megapolis Bengaluru, which led the country’s IT revolution, is now at the forefront in ushering the new age technology wave: Internet of Things (IoT). The city is home to as many as 536 IoT-related startups, which is more than half of the total number of such startups across the country.
The term IoT simply refers to a network of computing devices, digital machines and physical objects enabled with unique identifiers and with an ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human interface.

According to the latest data available with ‘IoT for India’, a platform jointly maintained by TiE Bangalore and the Indian Electronics and Semiconductors Association (IESA), there are 983 IoT startups in the country. There has been a 100 per cent surge in the number of IoT startups in the country in just a span of one year.

“The software genes of Bengaluru have made a difference,” said Ashwini K Aggarwal, Chairman-Executive Council, IESA. With the semiconductor industry rooted here, it has played to the advantage of the city. However, other cities in the country too are witnessing a growth in IoT-related companies even as the technology is fast emerging to be crucial for the global industry, Aggarwal added.

Agri-tech, automobile-tech and energy management technology are some of the sectors which are being revolutionised by the IoT, according to industry sources. Speaking to Express, Madhukar Khare, founder of city-based startup Wispero, said Bengaluru was the best destination in the country to set up IoT initiatives owing to access to global network which the city provided. There was a huge network advantage here spurred by co-working spaces, where professionals could interact with a diverse range of people, he pointed out. “Access to information is high in Bengaluru,” he said.  

Vishal Pandya, co-founder, REConnect Energy, an IoT startup in the city working in the energy space, added that the city had an edge for IoT development when it came to three aspects: Software, communication channels and networks and knowledge of data management. “In IoT, hardware remains the core element. But what is needed beyond that is software skilling. From that point of view, Bengaluru is the right place to find people,” he said.