Tag: IoT

6 Great Challenges Building an IoT Solution for Hajj

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.

Target Hajj Market

Based on our market research, we saw Hajj market is very suitable for Raqib as per the following reasons:

  1. More than 2.3 Million perform Hajj per year (about 30,000 pilgrims are from Malaysia)
  2. Different languages and cultures make communication very difficult during an emergency.
  3. Many pilgrims went missing because of the crowded nature and unfamiliar with foreign places.
  4. People can easily fall sick or faint due to heat and dust. The need to call help immediately is a challenge.
  5. Constant care and monitoring are required to have peace of mind when performing Hajj, especially when traveling with a spouse that is elderly.
  6. The hajj peak period is between 5-6 days with crowded people in small areas. Thus, it’s a challenge to find a missing person, especially almost all wearing similar robes and clothes.
  7. When staying at Mina, the tents are very similar, and thus finding a way home can be a significant challenge.
  8. Crowded places include Mina, Arafat, Muzdalifah, and Tawaf at Kaaba.
During 2019 Umrah

Challenges of Building an IoT Solution (Raqib) for Hajj

We noticed that pivoting to a different market segment is not as straightforward as expected. The challenges are:

  1. Device – What are the main parameters that we should monitor? Is it health vital signs or safety (tracking locations)? For some, measuring the blood pressure level is more important, whereas others want to know the whereabouts of their spouse. 
  2. Network and Roaming – The model we offered only supports 2G networks and voice capability. Not many M2M sim cards provided by telcos have the roaming capability, and the cost can be high too due to the data roaming charges. Since we are bundling Raqib only for simple monitoring, we only limit data usage for wearable purposes and not for web browsing (users can detach the sim card and misuse it for other purposes). Enabling the right APNs of the device for different network operators in Saudi is also a challenge.
  3. Trial Period – Since Hajj is seasonal (once a year), we must find a way to trial at the Hajj site itself. The first option, we gave the device to our partners and customers who are performing their Umrah. We received a lot of issues during this trial, but we overcame it when we offered to our Saudi partner and our Malaysian trial customers to test during the 2018 Hajj. I also have personally tested Raqib during my Umrah in early 2019.
  4. User Behavior – It is also one of the biggest challenges because a user must always wear the Raqib watch to work as expected. If a person leaves the Raqib watch at their hotel, then the data on the Raqib app will not be accurate or consistent. The device must also be robust enough to withstand water during wudhu or bath. The user needs to charge the battery consistently, which is very challenging when the source of power is scarce in places like Arafat and Mina.
  5. Go-to-Market Strategy – Who will buy or subscribe to Raqib? Do we sell this to the Hajj authorities, or should we sell this to Hajj Travel Agencies? Or should we sell directly to the end-users? What’s the business model? It’s pretty challenging to sell as a CAPEX-based model because the Raqib requires sim cards, and the data need to be activated. Since this is a Hajj solution and it only happens once a year, what happens when a user returns home – do they want to continue using them. Or should it be a rental model for the travel agents – they can re-use the device for another group of Umrah pilgrims. Unfortunately, this rental doesn’t work because of the tedious logistics process – collecting the devices, cleaning them, and managing the stocks.
  6. Going Beyond Malaysian Market – For Raqib to be successful, it must capture a global market because the Hajj market is small and seasonal. However, to do this, we need to test the roaming capability of the sim cards – and we have done it successfully in Saudi Arabia, India, Maldives, Egypt, Bangladesh, and Thailand.

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.

RAQIB Crowdfunding – Launchgood

Articles worth reading:

  1. TaqwaTech – RAQIB for Hajj
  2. Raqib Is The Companion You Need During Your Hajj & Umrah
  3. Raqib – Solution to Care and “Watch” The Pilgrims During Hajj and Umrah
  4. RAQIB Raising Donation Campaign With LaunchGood – Peace of Mind for Hajj Pilgrims in 2019

How We Build a New Generation-IoT Movement

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.

The Early Days of IoT

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.

The Beginning of Generation-IoT

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.

Who are the Generation-IoT?

Bearing Fruits and Skepticism

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.

https://www.slideshare.net/mazlan1/generationiot-the-key-to-business-survival-in-21st-century
Slideshare

Articles worth reading:

  1. Generation-IoT is Set to Become a Global Movement
  2. Who Are the New Generation-IoT
  3. Expert Advice for Generation-IoT
  4. Generation-IOT That Will Disrupt The World
Source: 5 Traits of Generation-IoT

How We Build Our Fourth IoT Product

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).

The Problem Statement

When 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.

How Big is the Market

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.

Travel and Tourism Market

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.

The IoT Solution

We chose a mobile app as the solution because of the following reasons:

  • Cheaper because this “IoT” solution uses the individual’s device, i.e., smartphone. GPS is the only sensor needed. The user has paid their connectivity charges (mobile data). The user only needs to download the app and pay for premium features.
  • Easier to deploy and manage the users (only via the Google Store and App Store)
Dscover

Go-to-Market

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.

Time to Stop Developing New IoT Products

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.

Dscover Resources

Articles worth reading:

  1. How We Build Our First IoT Product
  2. How We Build Our Second IoT Product
  3. How We Build Our Third IoT Product
  4. How We Build Our Fourth IoT Product

On a Journey of IoTising Business

“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.

[bctt tweet=”On a Journey IoTising Business”]

What, according to you, makes one a dynamic leader? How do you integrate the same thought into your leadership?

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.

What led to the formation of FAVORIOT? What role do you play in the day-to-day proceedings of the company?

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.

What has the journey been like for Mazlan Abbas over the years? Looking back, what would you have done differently when starting?

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.

What is the process followed by the company when offering its services? How do we ensure optimal client satisfaction?

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.

What would be your advice for young and aspiring leaders or entrepreneurs?

Answer:

  1. Test your ideas early.
  2. Get feedback regarding your product and iterate until you get the product-market fit.
  3. Don’t be ashamed if the original ideas failed or were not accepted. 

What has been the biggest roadblock during your journey? What has been your most significant learning?

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.

Moving forward, what does the future look like for you and FAVORIOT?

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.

Credit: Exeleon’s 100 Dynamic Leader

Credit to Exeleon Magazine

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/

Credit: Exeleon’s 100 Dynamic Leader

Articles worth reading:

  1. How We Build Our First IoT Product
  2. How We Build Our Second IoT Product
  3. How We Build Our Third IoT Product
  4. How We Build Our Fourth IoT Product

How We Build 3 IoT Products

Three (3) FAVORIOT IoT Products

What’s the best strategy to build a business? To focus on a single product or multiple products? Should we place everything (money) into a single basket or not?

Well, it depends … In almost any Startup, the first product can sucks and your initial vision can change along the way. Pivot is normal in any Startup.

The same thing happen to us — when we build our first product called Raqib. It is targeted for elderly people. But later we pivot the market for Hajj pilgrims.

The second product is Favorsense, which is meant to help the local authorities in handling complaints from the public. It can also be used to collect data and identify the real pain-points of the cities before we start building Smart Cities applications.

Even the target market for Favorsense has been expanded for Campus, Housing Developers, Enforcement Agencies and many others.

The third product is the Favoriot IoT platform itself, which is meant to become an enabler to build new IoT applications. It was offered as Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). It now has more than 5300 users from 115 countries worldwide and still growing.

So far, the Favoriot IoT platform has been more successful than the rest of the products. The traction has been very encouraging. Furthermore, any IoT deployment MUST have an IoT platform and we want our Favoriot platform to be the preferred choice.

Why IoT Adventure Book?

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.

IoT Adventure – Your IoT Adventure Begins Here

IoT Adventure Contents

It will highlight several things (list is not exhaustive):

  • Why is IoT as the main business?.
  • In which area should we focus in IoT since it covers a very vast area.
  • Who and where do we find the customers?
  • Do we really have IoT killer apps?
  • How do we build the first IoT product?
  • What are the things we need to avoid failure?
  • How do we market our IoT product?
  • How do we price our solutions?
  • What are the business models?
  • What kind of support is required?
  • How do we grow our IoT business?

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.

Sign-up – Please inform me of your new IoT Adventure eBook!
[wpforms id=”231″]

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

IoT in the World of Covid-19

[The article was originally published in IoT World]

Since early last year (2020), most of us have now lived in the new norm. Most of the things that we do physically has now changed drastically either with the usage of technology of the way we interact.

Digital and telecommunications are two forms of technology which are critical in the new norm. With physical distancing or periods during lockdown, the only way we get in touch is via telecommunications. Pen and paper has been reduced drastically with conversion of content into digital. Usage of Internet especially online conferencing for either webinars or meetings have been a new norm.

But how do technology like Internet of Things (IoT) can play a significant role in the new norm? Check out the video from Dr. Mazlan Abbas, FAVORIOT below.

IR 4.0 — To Survive or Become Obsolete

For the last 50 years only 19% of companies are in existence today. Many did not survive or unable to sustain due to many reasons. However, one of the key reasons are due to the fact that they are unable to compete or remained competitive whereas their competitors have transformed their business by leveraging new technologies and new business models.

Digitalisation and Internet has been very key in these transformation. New products and services have been created. Their operations are becoming more agile and productive. This is the outcome when companies embraced new changes openly. Their lleaders are the risk takers and have excellent vision of the future.

Every 3 to 7 years companies need to transform themselves, reinvent their operations and business. They should look at the current and future trends of technologies and see whether they can leverage these powerful technologies and together surf the great waves of disruption.

Check out Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of FAVORIOT video explaining about the great changes happening in IR 4.0.

[Article orginally published here — IoT World]

Tips for Generation-IoT

Who are the Generation-IoT? Generation-IoT has been defined by Maciej Kranz in the article “Generation IoT: The Key to Business Survival in the 21st Century. Below are the traits of the Generation-IoT:

  1. They are pioneers in IoT.
  2. All are willing to learn and take risks and are good at building virtual teams internally and partnering externally.
  3. You can recognize these new winners not by their age or their titles — but by their ability to build and deploy agile, flexible business solutions.
  4. A new generation of leaders, makers, thinkers, and doers is meeting that change with flexibility and optimism and transforming it into opportunity.
  5. These are the people who see the transformational power of IoT-driven processes, business models, and new revenue streams.
  6. They are eager to champion and drive these opportunities in their organizations.
  7. These people know that IoT is not just one project, one training session, one change.
  8. They know that in order to succeed they and their organisations need to adjust and re-learn, over and over again.

But how do we encourage the growth of this new “generation”? We need them as many as possible to help us spur the whole industry. We need more fresh and innovative ideas to transform their own business or their customers. But how do we train them and get them ready to be absorb directly into organisations?

We can provide them with the necessary tools to start their journey. One of the common layer that glue the “hardware” and the “software” is the IoT middleware or the platform. The Generation-IoT must understand what are the necessary knowledge to build the electronic devices and find the necessary connectivity to the platform. But if they wish to build innovative IoT applications or using the data for the purpose of machine learning, they need to acquire this data from the IoT platform. They have a choice either to build or subscribe to any IoT platform. And currently, there are hundreds of IoT platforms worldwide as shown below.

[Source: Expert Advice for Generation-IoT]

How Do We Harness The Power of IoT

Harnessing the Power of IoT

[This article is originally published in IoT World]

It all started with when Kevin Ashton, working as a brand manager trying to figure out and track the amount of lipstick available on the shelves. In 1999, the term “Internet of Things” was coined by Kevin Ashton utilising RFID to track such assets. Twenty more years down the road, IoT has become a key technology not only to keep track of such asset but also create new products and services which can disrupt many businesses.

It ranges from manufacturing to agriculture and to Smart Cities. In fact, it can offer better tracking and monitoring solutions for end consumers using wearables devices. What we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more applications can be built. The combinations of customised hardware or sensors, different kinds of connectivity, the power of the cloud and analytics brings forth unimaginable innovative solutions for the end-users.

Check out how we can harness the power of IoT by Dr. Mazlan Abbas, CEO of FAVORIOT in the below video.