Exclusive Interview - Angira Agrawal, COO, Skylo Technologies

Skylo Technologies has been making headways in providing enterprise-grade IoT solutions. It provides mission-critical use cases to industries such as logistics, farming, fishery and railways. The company has recently announced a partnership with Inmarsat to deliver commercial NB-IoT solutions via satellite.

Mr. Angira Agrawal is the Chief Operations Officer at the firm. He has held leadership positions at Vodafone Idea, Oracle and Tata Communications in the past. He has over two decades of experience across cloud, IoT, networks and enterprise software.

With Voice&Data, Mr. Agrawal talks IoT, NB-IoT, the various roles it takes and what the future holds in store for the industry.

How has the role of NB-IoT changed in the 21st Century?

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) is a wireless communication standard for low power wide area networking (LPWAN) technology. This technology allows for a wide range of new IoT devices and services. Implemented well, NB- IoT creates new connected business models for traditionally ‘analog’ industries such as fisheries, agriculture and logistics/supply chain with multiplier effects on the Indian economy.

IoT deployment will accelerate the vision of a true Digital India. It will connect millions of sensors and machines so that anyone can gain actionable insights vital to business proliferation. Disruptive IoT solutions have an opportunity to serve the underserved by bringing affordable and easy IoT to the critical machines that run our businesses.

NB-IoT is still being called a developing technology, where do you see NB-IoT in the next decade or so?

NB-IoT has broadened the future of IoT, providing significantly improved communications between machines while lowering device power consumption needs.

Skylo is an end-to-end narrowband IoT solution that connects machines and sensors. It can deliver up-to-the-minute insights from data collected, across a wide range of use cases. Skylo’s satellite-based network can bring real time data connectivity anywhere, even in the most remote geographies. Existing networks have been designed to connect people. However, machines require a new kind of network to operate reliably for the ~80% of geographies that are either sparsely populated or, like the ocean, entirely unconnected. Skylo offers 100% connectivity, versus the ~70% (sometimes much less) that businesses typically receive today.

It is easy to say that NB-IoT is the future of device and sensor communication. The industry has made rapid progress over the recent few years. This is even more true in a country like India; where there are large expanses of population living in underserved and remote areas. As such, India offers a huge growth potential.

GSMA reports that there are 136 operators with NB-IoT networks in 64 countries. Do you think the technology has the potential to connect devices across the world?

NB-IoT provides significantly improved communications to have complete visibility into the machines we depend on. These solutions also help lowering device power consumption needs, and reducing the cost of network connectivity. This will lead to improved efficiency and also help create new business models for traditionally analog industries such as agriculture, construction, oil & gas, logistics, and many others.

Connecting the world's machines and sensors needs a new kind of network; especially those in remote and underserved areas like rural farms and those out at sea. These require a reliable network that is 100% continuous and always available. This is where satellites can play a major role, but until now, they have been too expensive to consider.

Recently, Skylo announced the launch of the world's first commercial NB-IoT network, how big of a market is India for global NB-IoT players? Do you think Skylo can leverage the said market in India? How do you think NB-IoT can help India achieve its digitization goals?

India has been at the cusp of a digital revolution for a few years now. This has largely been led by an Indian government seriously intent on turning India into an economic powerhouse, and leveraging “Digital India” to achieve this vision. Today, connectivity remains intermittent, often failing, often while still non-existent in remote areas, where a large part of farming happens remote farms operate, at the national borders, at powerline stations across the country’s vast hinterlands, at last-mile consumer goods distribution centres, far out to sea, and several other industrial operations.

With the rapid adoption of technology, fueled further by Industry 4.0, these industries are thirsty for data from their assets. Industries like agriculture, fisheries and logistics that for centuries have been largely offline till recently, and only now are transforming to haven’t had the opportunity to take full advantage of modern digital technologies like AI, machine learning, IoT, and satellite, regardless of their geography.

The IoT is already playing a pivotal role in India’s digitalization story. According to estimates, the IoT investments in India will triple, to touch ~USD 15 Billion this year by 2021 across both technology products and services components.

There is a continuous effort by the Government of India. This includes several positive policy measures to develop the country’s technology infrastructure. However, despite positive tailwinds, India continues to lag.  Even today, basic data connectivity remains non-existent in remote areas. There is a need to connect businesses operating in such areas. These businesses play an integral part of India’s growth story.

Skylo is working with government customers, small and large enterprise customers, and individuals to deploy solutions across the country.

• Fisheries: IoT data that can transform the way fishermen sell their catch while still at sea. This can help improve their standard of living
• Agriculture: Skylo is helping drive productivity by allowing farmers to intelligently sow and harvest crops more predictably through on-farm sensors.
• Machine rentals: Skylo radically expands options for entrepreneurs and industries interested in renting their equipment - from tractors to trucks, and other assets. As an example, construction companies can monitor their equipment location and know fuel levels at all times. They can also check on health of the equipment, benefit from predictive maintenance alerts, get alerts when something needs fixing to ensure minimal downtime. Further, it allows companies to keep an eye on assets to ensure renters are taking good care of the equipment.
• Logistics: With Skylo, drivers and fleet operators have the ability to monitor location of fleets, 100% of the time, and better understand their equipment - from temperature of refrigerated cargo, operation of digital locks and more. In addition, Skylo partnered with Omnicomm to monitor fuel consumption data to help cut costs and alleviate theft.

 What makes the Skylo Hub different from its competitor NB-IoT devices?

Skylo offers a cost advantage in satellite IoT communications that no other has been able to match. The product was designed on three distinct cornerstones.

• Low fixed cost: Before Skylo, connecting with a satellite network required professional installation of a meter-square antenna device costing more than $5,000 USD. Our Skylo Hub is about 8 inches square and the equivalent of a cellular modem in size, convenience, ease of install, and optimized for self-install.

Skylo's Hub can connect to 15 sensors through wire, WiFi or Bluetooth low energy (BLE). The Skylo Hub can operate while stationary and in motion. It can also work in extreme cold, sweltering heat, heavy rainfall and other harsh conditions.

• Low variable cost: Traditional satellite communications are extremely cost-prohibitive, making it impossible for most businesses to afford them. Skylo has partnered with Inmarsat to enable the world’s first commercial narrowband IoT-over-satellite solution. Inmarsat’s industry-leading L-band network forms the backbone of Skylo’s Satellite Network, ensuring unparalleled reliability, uptime and a high-quality user experience for customers at an extremely cost-effective price point.

Skylo’s purpose-built network for IoT incorporates proprietary methods of efficiently transmitting sensor & machine data, reducing satellite usage cost and making it possible to provide an end-to-end solution literally anywhere under the sky. Today, this is especially critical in under-networked, rural & remote areas of India; soon, Skylo will cover the entire world.

We understand that connectivity by itself is only part of the solution. With Skylo, we easily and rapidly integrate external sensors. Skylo cloud receives the sensor data is continuously for easy, ubiquitous availability. Skylo’s solutions help customers receive continuous coverage to send and receive critical two-way messaging, alerts, and continuously transmit valuable sensor data including location, soil moisture, fuel usage, temperature and much more.

• Connectivity: Skylo’s satellite IoT connectivity is changing the face of how ‘things’ are connected, enabling real-time data transmission and greater reliability, particularly where there is inconsistent or no cellular coverage. Skylo’s global IoT connectivity fabric makes way for thousands of life-changing applications — from managing vaccine efficacy during delivery, to advancing precision farming, to providing early warnings in the event of natural disasters.

Will Skylo at one point look to put its own satellites in space for providing connectivity to its NB-IoT solutions?

We recently announced a partnership with Inmarsat. In the near future, we will continue to work with them and other partners.

Indian telcos such as Jio, Airtel and Vi have all announced IoT plans for enterprises and individuals alike. How will Skylo compete with these companies?

Connecting people was the aim of all the networks that exist right now. However, machines, devices and sensors operate even in regions with poor population density and hence underwhelming or absent network coverage. Skylo’s technology innovations makes it possible to offer ubiquitous and highly reliable connectivity to this hitherto unserved market. Skylo uses satellite communication, a traditionally expensive option, to carry the specific kinds of data these sensors & machines send in a highly efficient and affordable manner.

Being a world’s first, there is currently no other solution that exists that can offer connectivity at such price points.  Every organization we have engaged with has been very excited about the power our solution can unleash for them, driving up business/operational efficiency, customer experience and employee safety.