1. IoT – Retail
O.P Khanduja

2. Current State of IoT Adoption in Retail
The Indian retail industry is one of the most dynamic and fast paced industries to have come up in recent years. Although, the Indian retail industry is predominantly unorganized, healthy economic growth, changing demographic profile, increasing disposable incomes, changing consumer tastes and preferences are some of the key factors that have contributed to the growth of organized retail. Digital & IOT is playing a major role in shaping the way consumers buy.
Mobile Wallets – In 2016, demonetization of two key Indian currencies paved the way for the growth of mobile payment apps such as Paytm and Freecharge. In- app and digital payment options will continue to grow popular and customers may soon start replacing physical wallets with mobile phones.
Indoor positioning technology – Using indoor location data, retailers can target customers better with promotional offers and advertisements, while also improving their in-store experience with provision of features such as smart product search, smart shopping lists, and indoor maps to aid quick shopping, all on their handheld devices.

3. What does future of IoT look like in Retail
Future of IoT for Retail include supply chain, connected consumer and smart-store applications. In particular, let’s look at two areas where retailers are taking advantage of IoT:  
Predictive equipment maintenance is used for managing energy, predicting equipment failure or detecting other issues. For example, every grocery store has a lot of complex equipment – most people recognize refrigeration units. When these units are instrumented with sensors, we can predict maintenance issues that might affect power consumption for savings or monitor temperature fluctuations to ensure food safety.
Moving merchandise more efficiently is one of the goals of smart transportation applications in retail, and IoT can come into play with the maintenance of transport, tracking and route optimization. We know many retailers have been using GPS to track and route trucks in the last couple of years. With IoT, we are able to understand to a much higher degree of accuracy how close a pallet of merchandise is to a given store.
The differentiation with IoT will come from a retailer’s ability to sense, understand and act on IoT data with analytics. It won’t be in the technology, the devices or the IoT plumbing. To take advantage of this new promising area, retailers should focus on IoT applications that better serve customers and create value.

4. What can you expect from Retail in the 3rd edition of IoT India Congress
Issues associated with data privacy & security is expected to hamper the IoT in retail market growth over the forecast timeline. The hardware & software components in the network are prone to cyber-attacks, which is predicted to curb the demand.
High implementation cost coupled with compatibility of devices and lack of common standards for IoT solutions are among the other challenges faced by the retailers.
As far as Retail is concerned of course boosting digital communication infrastructure will provide Ecommerce reach to remotest regions of the country. However, Retail is now mostly dependent for its trade on digital banking transactions which are prone to get hacked and a bit vulnerable.
We should emphasize on creating the BEST Anti-Hacking Secured Transaction systems to build up trust among customers and stringent punishment for offenders.

5. See you there