Emergence Of Ecosystem - Internet Of Things In South East Asia

This is where it all boils down to! Imaging a huge population with a massive internet penetration and with amenities at the tip of their fingertips – where does the logical conclusion lead? The consumers then start asking – “Can we do more with our devices? Can we connect everything together to further the ease of use?” and voila: we reach the final conjecture of technological advancements; Ecosystems. The purist have coined this development as the advent of “Internet of Things” (IoT). And true to its nature, the countries of South East Asia, the pioneers of modern technological adaptation have more than willingly embraced this new change that is headed their way. According to a study by Frost & Sullivan, the IoT spending in the region is expected to grow in volume by 35% from $1. 68 Billion in 2015 to $7. 53 Billion by 2020. Other reports further complement these findings. Gartner in its finding have noted that by 2020 a total of 20. 8 billion devices would be connected to the internet, sending data to and using data from it.

One of the biggest drivers of this growth is the wide scope of applications that can be made out of IoT. From Smart homes, Wearables, Connected Cars, industrial Internet, Retail, Smart Cities, Agriculture, Healthcare, IoT is a scope which is making its headway into all forays of life, irrespective of demography and social and cultural barriers. Let’s visualise an example: The year is 2030 and John, an individual in Thailand is returning home from a doctor’s appointment. Near the doctor’s place is a public parking lot but based on his destination entered in the car GPS, the parking lot sensors guide him to the nearest exit to the clinic. Once inside the clinic, he realised he has forgotten some of his records but here as well, based on his social identification number, his entire medical history is right there for the doctors to check > on his way back he realises that he needed to buy groceries but doesn’t which shop is open till now. But he seems unfazed- he simply scans the product QRs attached to the pictures on the parking wall lot and the connected system makes sure that his groceries get delivered to him from the nearest available store to his doorstep. As soon as John reaches home, the room lights are lit up, the AC switches on to his favourable temperature and a soothing music of Beethoven, john’s favourite starts playing.

Although this may seem farfetched right now, but with the advent of numerous start-ups dedicated to its own area of expertise are toiling hard to make every single aspect a reality and the governments have taken cognizance of this gentle giant. This is possibly the biggest win for this technology as in various Southeast Asian countries, the Public sector in assistance with their private counterparts are setting up infrastructure for the future that has just been described, Leading this particular lot are the markets of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. For example, Singapore considers IoT to be one of the essential elements to realise its vision of a Smart Nation.

“Without sensing capabilities, we cannot build context and intelligence, or Smart Nation applications to develop the smart services we envisage, ” said Toh Chai Keong, former assistant CEO, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), which was recently restructured as part of the Infocommunications Media Development Authority (IMDA). Let’s talk about Singapore Power, A government initiative to make the smartest use of the power grids that will connect an additional 200, 000 residential electricity customers by further leveraging its existing mesh network platform.

Another Start-Up, SmartClean has created its own hardware devices which collects data form the washrooms and through deep learning algorithm trains itself to find out the optimal usage of resources, be it water or informing cleaners on when to visit a particular washroom next. It has garnered a lot of interest form the World Toilet organisation. In Malaysia, the government is following the National IoT Strategic Roadmap that was drawn up by MIMOS, the country’s national research and development centre in ICT under the purview of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Further north in Thailand, the introduction of 4G wireless broadband networks and the proliferation and affordability of internet-connected devices are making it conducive for IoT adoption.

Frost and Sullivan estimated Thailand’s IoT spending to increase from US$57. 7m in 2014 to US$973. 3m in 2020, with the bulk of the spending in manufacturing and logistics. While these are the few market sthat have been talked about here, the story remains unchanged across the various markets of Southeast Asia with various other candidates like PINS (Indonesia), Elsa Speak (Vietnam), EFishery (Indonesia) and others who are championing the cause of IoT across the entire region.

Conclusion

Southeast Asia is a diverse region, made up of 11 different countries, and dozens of different languages, cultures and socio-economic societies. It’s not surprising then that the experience of success in the tech space is going differ wildly, with developed Singapore on one end of the spectrum and more under-developed nations like Myanmar on the other end. That’s not to say there’s no potential in the less technologically-forward countries. Steady steps are being taken by tech-preneurs in all countries and the region is slowly emerging as a force to be reckoned with. According to Amit Anand, Co-Founder of tech- centric investment firm, Jungle ventures, Singapore - “If you look back in 2008 Singapore was just where the Philippines, and shortly these other countries will catch up. Nobody owns entrepreneurship. ”

According to Anand, a good environment for entrepreneurship to thrive is one that offers access to talent, markets and capital. Southeast Asia is lucky in the sense that it’s seen huge influx of capital, interest and money from mainland China, which is turning its considerable powers into growing the region’s tech potential. The gleaming stars in the region are Jakarta and Singapore, according to Anand, as both cities have supplied some of the biggest volumes of entrepreneurs to date. “The good thing about SEA unlike many other markets is that we have these two hubs building out, which are creating good quality companies, developing good talent ecosystems and it should keep the region exciting for a long time. ”