IoT to drive job creation, says telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan

Sundararajan noted that IoT can bridge the huge deficits that India has been facing in terms of infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare among others.
Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary of the Department of Telecom, Government of India. | (Albin Mathew | EPS)
Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary of the Department of Telecom, Government of India. | (Albin Mathew | EPS)

BENGALURU: India is on the cusp of a second-generation digital revolution, which will spread across the economic spectrum -- from agriculture, rural-commerce, healthcare, education, financial & other services, manufacturing to infrastructure development--- and create 10-15 million jobs in India by 2022 and render some existing ones obsolete.

According to Aruna Sundararajan, telecom secretary, IoT is particularly exciting for India thanks to the job creation it offers.

“It is estimated that 10-15 million jobs will be created through IoT,” she said while speaking at the second edition of IoT India Congress 2017, organised by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) India. She noted that a bulk of these jobs would be created by start-ups and not by large companies. According to experts, nearly 70 per cent of start-ups are already working on different aspects of IoT.

Sundararajan noted that IoT can bridge the huge deficits that India has been facing in terms of infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare among others.

“Foreign players like Google and Facebook are also looking at investing in tower infrastructure and cloud-based services,” she added.

She said the entire telecom in the country can be expected to get upgraded to 4G in the next few months.

“We have a lot of capability in software and most of the technological inventions are driven by software. If we marry that with the telecom capability, India can definitely be a leader in IoT space,” added Sundararajan.

“The  new telecom policy will also see what quantum of investment is needed for technologies like 5G.”

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