5G with its high-speed and low latency service will help realise the Government of India’s Digital India, Smart Cities and Digital Villages Missions aiming to improve citizen services, bring transparency and good governance. IoT based solutions and services in healthcare, agriculture and retail when powered by 5G will enable connected and ubiquitous services to the citizens.   IoT is driving innovation and new opportunities in the digital realm. Traditionally, India has been a consumer of technology and a laggard in adoption, especially when it comes to the network. This time, India too plans to roll out state-of-the-art 5G telecom services with the rest of the world by 2020 driven more by demand than supply. 5G with its high-speed and low latency service will help realise the Government of India’s Digital India, Smart Cities and Digital Villages Missions aiming to improve citizen services, bring transparency and good governance. IoT based solutions and services in healthcare, agriculture and retail when powered by 5G will enable connected and ubiquitous services to the citizens. Enterprises using 5G networks will deploy IoT technology to connect the unconnected products for offering connected services to consumers. Similarly, IoT technology is being applied for predictive maintenance in the automotive sector, smart city projects, smart security and surveillance for safety of citizens from internal and external threats. Other applications of IoT include, smart retail for enhancing customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, smart agriculture for better food productivity and consumption, smart and connected factories with industries 4.0 and even sustainable development with river rejuvenation, water conservation and water resource monitoring technologies. The momentum for IoT-enabled ecosystem is building up in India. Enterprises, SMB’s and government bodies have established working groups dedicated to achieving this goal. Even after having several models of standards development, such as the proprietary- and government-led models, collaborative standards development has apprehended a superior position. Creating an application ecosystem, preparing the network infrastructure and establishing strategic partnerships are essential to help develop sustainable business models for IoT ecosystem. Steps to be taken: ·         Establish a strong IoT ecosystem with stakeholders right from devices to OEM’s to regulatory bodies, telcos, technologist and system integrators. This would enhance the quick integration, deployment and implementation for the services required right at the last mile ·         Reduce duties on imported components like chipsets, network modules etc to encourage IoT hardware assembly in India, which shall also help in bringing the cost of IoT devices down IoT is a growing paradigm with technical, social, and economic significance. Recently a joint report published by ASSOCHAM and EY claimed that in a hyper-connected India, IoT has the potential to reach an estimated 2 billion connections, unlocking revenues of USD 11.1 billion by 2022. However, this technology poses very critical security challenges which needs to be addressed for IoT to reach its full potential. Though many IoT security considerations are not necessarily new being inherited from the use of networking technologies. However, IoT is getting featured in almost all the security prediction lists for 2019 – Beyond all-too-common corporate attacks, 2018 witnessed increased threats across a diverse range of targets and victims. The safeguard of IoT deployments depends on the protection of all systems involved (the devices and sensors that collect data, network, cloud backend and services, applications, maintenance and diagnostic tools, etc.). Addressing these challenges and ensuring security in IoT products and services is critical and has to be taken up on priority as attacks on IoT deployments could dramatically jeopardise people’s security, privacy and safety, while additionally IoT in itself can be used as an attack vector against other critical infrastructures. Also, since IoT can drastically change the ways personal data is collected, analysed, used, and protected, privacy concerns have been raised. These need to be addressed to ensure user trust and confidence in the Internet, connected devices, and related services. As hackers become more sophisticated, so should response and risk mitigation strategies. The first step towards protection is awareness followed by vigilance with diligence. A multi-layered security policy that helps detect and isolate risks across the threat lifecycle will also help. But strategy must address all the complex layers and integrations IoT is built with. I believe that it is crucial for securing IoT offerings at the design stage rather than attempting to hold back the tide of attacks and adding security to systems once they have been deployed. Given the way the world is getting more and more connected, security can no longer be an afterthought for IoT players. Security measures must be designed in from the start and treated as an ongoing process. Industry 4.0 has made inroads in Indian manufacturing to support the digitization efforts in both the public and private sector. The Government of India in their recent announcement has reduced corporate tax rate for domestic companies to 22 per cent, provided no exemptions or incentives are availed, bringing the effective tax rate to 25.17 per cent including all surcharges and cesses. This will be a boost for India’s ‘Make in India’ programme making India’s IoT Industry grow stronger every day. These are very encouraging initiatives taken both by the government however a lot more required to realize the full potential of IoT. A strong need for a shift in mindset is required before there is a shift in capacity. Instead of just undertaking more capital expenditure, the focus should be on enhancing existing asset base. Adopting IoT will give a new lease of life to industrialization in India. The author is President at Aeris Communications and Chairman IET IoT Panel DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.