IoT-NCR, an open community is growing rapidly and selflessly to spread the know-how on IoT/M2M in India. Community is focused on developing IoT skill sets among kids, students, professionals and startups to build India’s largest not-4-profit IoT learning & development platform.
These all started from an idea to build a platform to meet, greet and share knowledge among people and founded with a motive to build India’s largest open IoT community. “We have miles to go before We Sleep” is the mantra of the 7 member CORE team which has taken the effort to build this magical platform. Core team members are Vinay Solanki, Jasmeet Saran, Mayur Wadhwani, Nikhil Gupta, Rishi Gargi, Sumit Jain, Tajinder Singh. This open community claims to have 3500+ members on board and expecting to touch 5000+ members by its 2nd anniversary in Dec 2017.
We are living in the connected world of IoE(Internet of Everything) where companies like Cisco predicts > 50 billion connected devices by 2020. McKinsey Global Institute says by 2025, IoT could generate > $11 trillion a year in economic value. GE says Industrial IoT market will add $10-$15 trillion to global GDP and as per J S Deepak, Telecom Secretary Govt of India, IoT will provide $15 billion value for businesses in India. Clearly #IoT is the next BIG thing to happen to world of technology and the bug has bitten many of us including me.
Innovation Hub is Born:
On the night of Nov 24th 2015 while sniffing through avenues to learn IoT and make my hands dirty I found disappointment. I wanted to meet like-minded people, professionals, experts and understand IoT in depth as it was gradually becoming 2nd love of my life, my wife being the first of-course. When I stumbled upon meetup I thought lets kickoff a meetup with an intention to build a network of IoT experts in #Delhi-NCR region of India. I scheduled 1st meetup hoping to see 20-25 odd people without knowing where I will host it. But power of community was quickly realized, 40 folks RSVP and to my surprise 58 showed up with one of them offering their office space. Ideas started flooding and everyone’s excitement led to birth of IoT-NCR, added Vinay Solanki, founding member of IoT-NCR.
Theory to Hands-On:
Frankly we started very humble with the scope of meeting once a month and learning something new. We started using basic prototyping boards such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ESP 8266 and temperature sensors to build simple use cases. We partnered with #Microsoft, #IBM to conduct events on cloud technologies such as Azure and BlueMix. Mostly we did seminars and theory sessions but soon realized that hands-on is key to understand IoT, which is amalgamation of software and hardware coming together to create magic. From #3D printing to building connected door alarm, from location based service using #Beacons at #Airtel to learning #SAP #HANA cloud platform and from teaching #Kids to 60 years old IoT enthusiasts we became unstoppable in fostering our excitement and innovation, added Vinay Solanki in a conversation with Electronics Media.
Partnerships:
We started connecting with other communities, conference organizers, IoT experts and corporate to expand our reach. We linked with #EFY as partner for IoT conference in Bangalore and as media partner, with #91Springboard as location partner, with #Nagarro as event partner, with #RSComponent as hardware provider and many more and soon crossed the magic figure of 1000 members right around our 1st anniversary. On our 1st anniversary we conducted IoT fundamentals session at #Aeris Communications, Noida, India with keynote from Dr. Rishi Bhatnagar (President Aeris India). We felt sense of togetherness and pride that we have achieved something and honored our speakers, partners, and core members who are helping to run this community. Since then we have never looked back and have launched many programs as listed below to scale this unique learning and development initiative, Vinay added in the conversation ahead.
Programs:
Basically we are hosting 4 programs which fulfill requirements of learners from all the backgrounds no matter where they come from, added Vinay.
StartUp Catalysts: Startup catalyst program enables entrepreneurs with a platform to talk about their product, hire skill set, share ideas and collaborate. We have >15 startups associated with this program.
Student Ambassador: We have launched program to make students flag bearer of IoT in colleges and in return given them opportunity to learn IoT from experts. There is no fee and its completely non commercial arrangement where we help to conduct student projects on IoT and in return expand our reach.
Faculty Development: Recently we launched train the trainer program to bring faculties up-to speed on IoT and to make sure they make it priority to enable their students learn, explore and practice this technology domain. Our first session was at IMS Noida covering some 45 faculties.
Open Projects: We also run a initiative to build some tangible products or prototypes using collaboration among community members. First project is pollution sensing solution with smart home, waste management, agriculture and few others in discussion stage.
Who can join this community?
Vinay Solanki: Of course anyone. Anyone those who are interested in learning IoT /M2M can join this community. Though this is an open and non profit community, we welcome IoT Professional to join this group of young and dynamic industry professionals from around Delhi NCR and rest of the India. Come join us to make this journey beautiful.
