Prime minister Narendra Modi has announced the launch of The Centre of Excellence (CoE) for IoT (internet of things) in Bengaluru to enable rapid adoption of IoT technology and to foster new growth strategy. This is part of Digital India programme.

A joint venture by National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), department of electronics & information technology (DeitY) and education and research network (ERNET), the CoE will be run on a public private partnership (PPP) model with seed fund from the government. It will be managed by the NASSCOM.

NASSCOM will create an eco-system for budding entrepreneurs to leverage new age technologies, provide access to researchers, industry and other stake holders.

In India, IoT can be leveraged to address issues like transport system, parking, power management, waste management, water management and women’s safety to create smart cities, smart health services, smart manufacturing and smart agriculture.

Additionally, the smart city and digital India campaign can also leverage IoT to bring about innovative applications and domain capability across verticals.

Talking about the initiative, R Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM said, “the ambitious plan of the government is being established in collaboration with the industry that will create an inclusive ecosystem. This Center of Excellence will act as an innovation accelerator to explore product ideas and establish high end technologies to support government initiatives of using IoT.”

 To foster of collaborative ecosystem of key stakeholders (government, industry & entrepreneurs, citizens) NASSCOM aims to democratize IoT innovations through incubation on multi-platform technology labs for - concept validation to products & solutions. The CoE will also function as a skills development platform to build industry capable talent and instill a temper of research and development across the board.

BVR Mohan Reddy, chairman of NASSCOM, said, “the technology industry is rapidly moving towards convergence of software and hardware. And this phenomenon is leading to the development some of the innovative products and solutions that will change the way we look at the world. NASSCOM welcomes the government in this partnership of setting up this Centre of Excellence and firmly believes that such initiatives will lead India in next phase of growth and excellence.”

The Government of Karnataka will be the partner state to set up the first 40-seater CoE facility in Bengaluru which will be co-located with NASSCOM 10,000 start-up warehouses. The center will be a testing facility for prototypes of concepts for horizontal and vertical solutions. The initiative aims to create a cluster of five CoEs across India.