Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces Internet of Things CoE in partnership with NASSCOM, DeitY and ERNET

As part of the Digital India program launch, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced the launch of The Centre of Excellence (CoE) for IoT in Bangalore, to enable rapid adoption of IoT technology and foster a new growth strategy as well empower India to have a leap frog advantage in the domain.  A joint venture by National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) and Education and Research Network (ERNET), the CoE will be run on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model with seed fund from the government and will be managed by NASSCOM.

As part of the initiative, NASSCOM will be instrumental in creating and supporting a physical lab infrastructure to build an eco-system for budding entrepreneurs to leverage new age technologies and access to researchers, industry and other stake holders. In India, Internet of Things (IoT) can be leveraged to address issues like transport system, parking, electricity, waste management, water management and women’s safety to create smart cities, smart health services, smart manufacturing and smart agriculture. Additionally, the smart city and digital India campaign can also leverage IoT to bring about innovative applications and domain capability across verticals.

Talking about the initiative, R Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM said, “The ambitious plan of the Government being established in collaboration with the industry will create an inclusive ecosystem for budding entrepreneurs and organization to leverage new age technologies and access to researchers, industry and other stake holders. This Center of Excellence will act as an innovation accelerator to explore product ideas and establish high end technologies to support government initiatives using IoT in areas like water, energy, agriculture, crime, safety and health.”

To foster of collaborative ecosystem of key stakeholders (Government, Industry & Entrepreneurs, Citizens) NASSCOM aims to democratize IoT Innovations through incubation on Multi-Platform Technology Labs for - Concept Validation to Products & Solutions. The CoE will also function as a skills development platform to build industry capable talent and instill a temper of research and development across the board.

Sharing his views, BVR Mohan Reddy, Chairman, NASSCOM, said, “The technology industry is rapidly moving towards convergence of software and hardware. And this phenomenon is leading to the development some of the innovative products and solutions that will change the way we look at the world. NASSCOM welcomes the government in this partnership of setting up this Centre of Excellence and firmly believes that such initiatives will lead India in next phase of growth and excellence.”

The Government of Karnataka will be the partner state to set up the first 40 seater CoE facility in Bangalore which will be co-located with NASSCOM 10000 start-up warehouse. The center will be a testing facility for prototypes of concepts for horizontal and vertical solutions. Going forward, the initiative aims to create a cluster of 5 CoEs across India.