India has become a hub for the development of connected home appliances, as companies are finding it easier to integrate the devices in the homes they are selling.
The country has the largest number of IoT devices, according to a recent report by analytics firm NPD Group, with 1.2 billion connected devices in 2016, or around 30% of the global total.
In India, this number is expected to grow to 5.6 billion by 2021, NPD said.
The companies that are leading the way are looking at how to integrate these devices in homes.
These include the makers of Nest, Fitbit, Nestle, Nest Labs and Samsung, which all are working with the country’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MIT) to create the connected home appliance ecosystem.
As part of its IoT strategy, the government is also planning to launch a pilot project in 2021 to connect homes with a smart city-scale water treatment plant.
It is also looking to integrate smart city smart meters in the coming years.
“Our government is working on the first of many connected homes that we can build,” said Nandan Nilekani, chief technology officer of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
“But to do it, we need the private sector.
We have to take advantage of their skills, experience and knowledge.
There are also many more things that are being done to make the ecosystem as seamless as possible.”
As an ecosystem grows, we have to provide access to a lot of different types of smart technologies.
But it also means that we have an ecosystem that has to evolve,” Nilekian added.