Aeris, BSNL to roll out Internet of Things products and services for rural India

Together, the companies will offer packaged IoT solutions and services to enterprises, small-and-medium businesses and public sector undertakings, among other segments in India. 

Last week, the Telecom ministry announced that the Centre would set up 7.5 lakh public Wi-Fi hotspots by end of 2018, with focus on rural areas. The aim is to have at least three Wi-Fi hotspots for each gram panchayat in the country. While the huge mobile subscription base in India provides for a huge market for Internet of Things (IoT), the impact of IoT has been limited to urban areas. Internet of Things services and technology provider Aeris has partnered with state-run telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) to jointly tap the IoT market in India.

If you see the kind of challenges that are prevalent in the rural areas, IoT can be a game changer in terms of enabling multiple projects in various domains, be it healthcare, natural resource management, and managing renewable energy infrastructure, among other things. With IoT enabled to help track, monitor and manage, such projects will receive a shot in the arm with IoT.

Together, Aeris and BSNL will offer packaged IoT solutions and services to enterprises, small-and-medium businesses and public sector undertakings, among other segments in India. Through its network, BSNL will enable IoT projects through solutions designed to meet various end uses, such as improving supply chain efficiency, enhancing customer experience, tracking and monitoring assets, improving logistics and empowering smart cities.

On the partnership and IoT’s potential in India, Anupam Shrivastava, Chairman and Managing Director, BSNL, said, “IoT is an enabling technology that bears the potential to take India to a whole new level of development and our vision is to play a significant part in this endeavour. In the days to come we will translate the potential of IoT into tangible benefits on the ground.”

BSNL will be offering Aeris’ stack of end-to-end IoT offerings to its enterprise customers, startups and prospects. Through this agreement, BSNL gains an additional revenue stream in the form of offering M2M connectivity and IoT solutions.

As of now, Aeris has 18 Made-in-India products that are being offered off the shelf. Additionally, it has an IoT platform and an analytics solution.It intends to expand the portfolio in the near future. Aeris’ IoT platform will be made available to third-party IoT solution developers so that they can develop solutions on their own.

Rishi Bhatnagar, President, Aeris Communications India, added, “From smart city projects to SMBs, large enterprises, PSUs and PPP projects across India will stand to gain immensely through this partnership. BSNL is also now among the few telecom players to have a complete stack of IoT solutions to offer, and this is a definite game-changer”.

Some of the solutions already developed include fleet management, blood bank management, asset management, cell tower monitoring, school safety, intelligent building management, smart city solutions, salesforce tracking, connectivity management platform, IoT analytics and smart metering. They are also working on river cleaning programmes across India, renewables and managing blood banks in remote areas of the country.

As per Deloitte's TMT India Predictions 2017, Internet of Things (IoT) is going to be the next big thing for operators as India will rapidly grow into a hub for IoT Solutions. The market value of IoT is expected to reach USD 9 billion by 2020. IoT units in India are also expected to see a rapid growth of 31 times to reach 1.9 billion by 2020.