LinkedIn is probably one of the best platforms to conduct surveys because most of the users are professionals. Their opinion and feedback are regarded very highly due to their professionalism in that particular area.
I have done several surveys on topics ranging from the Internet of Things and IR 4.0. Below are some of the results after 7 days of polling.
IoT Adventure Book will delve deeper into the business of IoT. It will also share the experience of being an IoT entrepreneur. Some of the topics have been written in the IoT World Blog. Check out the contents below:
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How do we gain traction and what do we learn from our early mistakes?
When I was with MIMOS, an R&D Agency under MOSTI, my role was developing wireless technologies, one of which was the Internet of Things, especially in developing new 6LoWPAN standards.
Later, we created new IoT applications but did not think about selling the applications. What are the business models, and who will be the paying customers?
However, when I left the organization and ventured into the telco world, the IoT business became challenging. We cannot apply all theories to the real world.
In the early days of Favoriot, we were very optimistic about the IoT market, and we thought customers were ready to jump into this as soon as they got the opportunity. But nothing is as easy as we thought! We were mesmerized by the number of IoT devices by 2020 and how the organizations will adopt Iot applications.
Here’re our 7 early mistakes and things that we overlooked:
It has been very challenging to promote the usage of our Favoriot IoT because we are new to the market, and most people are aware of other alternatives.
Thus, we set up a strategy to create awareness by promoting the Generation-IoT community to quickly help users start their IoT journey. We take this opportunity to create IoT training courses using the Favoriot IoT platform and bundling with an IoT ecosystem package to the educational institutions.
We went back to the Universities, Colleges, and Polytechnics and help them to refresh their IoT syllabus which suits the industry needs.
Since then, we have managed to groom many trainers, lecturers, and individuals with IoT knowledge and hands-on using Favoriot IoT platform.
It has become the beginning of our traction from education to the platform’s commercialization. The platform proves to become a better alternative to the existing IoT platforms in the market. We have gained the trust of the industry to become one of the IoT platforms of choice.
The local support and expertise give us a massive advantage to enter into IoT projects. We also teach them how to select the best IoT platform without evaluating hundreds of products in the market.
We regret not taking the education path 3 to 4 years earlier. Otherwise, the IoT landscape would be very different today.
But then, no one expects to connect the dots this way without learning the mistakes we are going through.
Dr. Mazlan Abbas
“Mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.”
Anonymous
This is part of the real stories about IoT entrepreneurship. Subscribe to IoT Adventure book when it’s available in the future. Read the archive here.
This article is the first part of our Raqib journey. The experience that we have learned building such a solution is priceless. We must always be prepared to overcome the technical challenges and go-to-market strategy.
RAQIB is the first IoT product we built when we launched our Startup in 2017. The initial target market was Senior Citizens. However, we pivoted (or expanded) our customer segment to cater to people going for their Hajj.
Based on our market research, we saw Hajj market is very suitable for Raqib as per the following reasons:
We noticed that pivoting to a different market segment is not as straightforward as expected. The challenges are:
This article is the first part of our Raqib journey. The experience that we have learned from building such a solution is priceless. We must always be prepared to overcome the technical challenges and go-to-market strategy.
Have you encountered any IoT solutions similar to Raqib? Please leave your comments below.
How do we build enough momentum to accelerate the growth of IoT talents? One of them is to develop a movement called “Generation-IoT”. This is the story.
The original article of the blog was posted here.
I am not sure, but maybe it’s always in my blood or DNA to share knowledge, build talent, or teach others. I started my journey in IoT as early as in the Year 2001. At that time, the telco was called M2M (or Machine-to-Machine). The data are kept in silos; systems are called Telemetry, and Scada is a common name. Applications are limited to remote meter reading and vehicle tracking.
We can rarely see any fancy IoT applications because technology is in infancy stage. Cloud services are not available, devices are still expensive, no smartwatches, no open API IoT applications and many other missing components.
LinkedIn is my main channel to communicate with friends from overseas. And when I fully embarked on IoT in 2014, I couldn’t even find enough friends to exchange ideas. You can barely see any jobs with the title “IoT” at that period (unlike today, “IoT” is ubiquitous in many job positions).
I was part of the team that developed the Malaysia National IoT Strategic Framework, and one of the missions was to create an IoT ecosystem. We don’t see this materialize a couple of years down the road. Very frustrating after the hard work.
Thus, we offered our FAVORIOT platform as an IoT ecosystem for Malaysia and created a Generation-IoT movement. And …oh boy! It was a lonely journey. And very tiring too. No one believed in the mission to become a ProducerNation by building our IoT products. Talents are lacking.
Luckily, I was invited by many local Universities to be part of many Industrial Advisory Panels. For four years, we re-look back at the University’s contents and syllabus to include IoT and make it more structured. We hoped to have more IoT talents in the market with this refreshed syllabus.
Now we are seeing the fruits of the labor; there are many courses in IoT, Masters in IoT (UTHM), Diploma in IoT (KKTMPJ), and even a Certificate in IoT (Kolej Komuniti Seberang Jaya).
But I also received many comments from people who mocked me, saying why am I helping the local Universities because they are not giving you any projects or becoming your primary revenue streams. Well, that’s another story for me to tell another day. Actually, as of today, education is my second highest revenue contributor.
I am happy to say that I have helped build a Generation-IoT that will become the future technology leaders of IoT.
Why did we build another IoT product? Why can’t we maintain the three IoT products developed earlier. Here’s the story.
When we launched the first IoT product called Raqib commercially in 2018, we received a lot of feedback from users and potential customers.
We have to decide to enhance the current product or spawn into a new product altogether.
Meanwhile, there are two more IoT products that we are still building and enhancing – the second product called Favorsense and the third product called Favoriot IoT platform.
Finally, we decided to follow our gut feeling and start building our fourth IoT product called Dscover (formerly named D’scover – we will reveal the reason for changing the spelling later).
How We Build Our Fourth IoT Product Click To TweetWhen we introduced Raqib as a single device solution for tracking (instead of using a Bluetooth smartwatch and a smartphone), we received much feedback that they don’t need the features of monitoring vital health signs.
But in which market is tracking the best suit for this product? Why the need for monitoring an individual in the first place?
In our early customer development process, tracking an individual is critical for safety – especially during travel.
If a person travels in a tour group, he wants to have some freedom on his own. But he also needs to be constantly connected with the group or his tour bus.
In the case of a tour guide responsible for the group, he must ensure the group’s safety, and the travel itinerary must be adhered to and to ensure no one is late or left behind.
If that person is lost, the easiest way is to locate through the mobile app. The app should also have a travel planner feature to organize and share among the tour members.
Initially, we targeted the Travel and Tourism market, which was vast and active before the Covid-19 strikes in early 2020.
Below are the statistics of the world’s and Malaysia’s No. of arrivals.
However, when travel and tourism were severely affected in 2020 and 2021 by restricted movement orders and banned in traveling, we pivoted our market to a family and friends app.
We chose a mobile app as the solution because of the following reasons:
The biggest challenge for such a product is that it has become a B2C model whereby the channel to market can be very challenging.
The most accessible marketing channel to reach the users is via Social Media – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
To conduct targeted ads, we need to identify the users’ demographics – in this case, the family members and friends.
Earlier, we named the product D’scover, but it is complicated for a user to search the app in the App Store because of the unique spelling. Finally, we decided to change the name to Dscover.
In the travel and tourism market earlier, we have a B2B model approaching Travel Agencies and Government, but unfortunately, Covid-19 has a significant impact in this sector.
We have even expanded the market segment to solve the issues of monitoring quarantined patients. However, for some unforeseen reasons, this solution did not get the buy-in from the authorities.
We asked ourselves, have we done enough marketing and sales before moving into another product? Building a new product can be long and tiring.
All four IoT products have their strengths and weaknesses – which I will be able to share in other Blog articles. It is only the beginning of my IoT Adventure – you may subscribe to the newsletter or the RSS feed.
“IoTise” or “IoTising” can be a new term coined by FAVORIOT, and it’s the process of transforming organization operations or business using IoT technology.
Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but it will start with the organization’s leaders that can Champion the initiatives. If an organization is “old,” it will have more internal challenges because of the different cultures and Era.
Technology is not the main stumbling block, but it has to plan early to ensure no wastage and have better buy-ins.
Below is the interview taken from Exeleon Magazine recently.
On a Journey IoTising Business Click To Tweet
Answer: In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, whereby digital disruption is happening all the time, a dynamic leader should be able to be agile enough to respond to the technological and business landscape. A person that willing to unlearn and relearn new things.
Answer: In the year 2016, I visited Silicon Valley on a business trip with several Malaysian business delegations. The exposure and the meetings with several big companies and Startups open the mindset that “anything is possible if we have a great vision.” FAVORIOT was officially formed in 2017 with the vision to help Senior Citizens who are aging at home to be monitored closely using wearable devices (IoT) and mobile applications.
Answer: Most of the time, technology is not the main obstacle to adopting the solution. It takes time for people to understand how technology like IoT can transform how they conduct business or run their operations. FAVORIOT is one of the earliest IoT Startups in the country. We have tried building several solutions internally, but the effort is huge to cater for different customer needs. Finally, we realized that our strength is the IoT platform we built which we have now offered to other ecosystem players. We could have captured the education market sector much earlier before moving up the value chain to business or corporate customers.
Answer: Education through training and webinars will open the eyes and minds of the customers. We encouraged the customers to think big but start small to get the buy-in from their C-suite levels. Understanding their business case and pain problems is critical in the early stage to ensure no wastage of effort later. It will be followed up with integration to their legacy systems before scaling up the deployment. In the final step, they will collect enough data to create new revenue streams, save costs, create new business models, or gather better insights regarding their business.
Answer:
Answer: The biggest roadblock is getting the first few customers that trust your product and solutions. What we feel about our product might not be the same as what the customer sees. The most significant learning is getting the product-market fit as fast as possible.
Answer: The users of FAVORIOT IoT platform started from less than three countries in 2017 and now have grown to 115 countries in 2021. We see the market for IoT has begun to grow faster in the last three years due to the awareness and fusion of many technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Big Data Analytics, Robotics, and Drones. In all IoT deployments, it will require some form of an IoT platform, and this is where FAVORIOT would like to excel – To IoTise all Businesses.
Digital Link – https://magazines.exeleonmagazine.com/100-Dynamic-Leaders-of-the-Year/
Web Version Link – https://exeleonmagazine.com/100-dynamic-leaders-of-2021/
Article Web Link – https://exeleonmagazine.com/mazlan-abbas-of-iotising-businesses/
When I have this idea to write another E-book on Internet of Things, I was trying to figure what’s the best way to share my IoT journey.
Earlier, I have published two E-books – Your IoT Journey (815 downloads) and IoT Notes (1445 downloads). Both of these E-books I have made it available for free. Initially when it was first launched, it was offered at a price below USD 2.99.
In the latest E-book, IoT Adventure, it will go deeper into the business of IoT. Mainly it will be from my personal experience venturing into IoT entrepreneurship.
It will highlight several things (list is not exhaustive):
You can check more of the IoT Adventure contents here.
Personally, it has been a very exhilarating adventure when I decided to embark on this journey. We have failed and learned a lot and it’s about time to share some of my experience so that we can help new IoT entrepreneurs to be more successful in their mission to solve their customer’s problems.
But I also would like to open to comments from the readers to share their thoughts and experiences about their IoT business too and how it can help the whole IoT ecosystem to spur and grow exponentially.
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The path in building an IoT business is not straightforward – especially when it involved many IoT Ecosystem players, new market and mindset transformation.
Dr. Mazlan Abbas
