India's Industry 4.0: The quiet revolution of smart machines

With a USD 23B market set to reach USD 50 B in five years, industrial loT adoption unlocks huge revenue potential for India's major telecom and IT firms

- VERNIKA AWAL

Over the past decade, India's push to ramp up local manufacturing and supply chains has been well-documented. The third term of the National Democratic Alliance is expected to push this agenda further, promoting the semiconductor ecosystem with an uptick in domestic value addition of local manufacturing. In fact, the country's domestic manufacturing is aimed to contribute 25% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the end of 2025.

The adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IoT), in particular, will be vital to achieving parity and progress in India's Industry 4.0 goals.

None of this is hyperbole. According to a report by market researcher Colliers in December last year, India's manufacturing industry is on track to reach USD 1 trillion in value by FY26. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) data released in May by the National Statistics Office (NSO) indicates that India's overall factory output rose by 5.8% through FY24, a growth significantly contributed to by the resilient domestic manufacturing sector.

This presents India, primarily through the three private telecommunications service operators, with an opportunity to see a meteoric rise in the adoption of lloT solutions to proliferate Industry 4.0 across the country's manufacturing sector.

IIOT AND INDUSTRY 4.0

In simple terms, the lloT uses sensors, algorithms, private networks, and data analytics and retrofits all of this into India's legacy manufacturing sector. By connecting 'things' to the Internet, the lloT promises to make 'dumb' machines smart, thereby making them produce data that reveals operational discrepancies, inefficiencies, and irregularities in various processes.