Mazlan Abbas - Mazlan Abbas

Contents of IoT Adventure Book

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:

IoT Applications

IoT Tips

Smart Cities

IoT Infographics

FAVORIOT Products and Services

IoT and IR 4.0 in Malaysia

IoT Challenges

Generation-IoT

Things About IoT

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IoT – How We Learned 7 Mistakes and Turned into Traction

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.

7 Mistakes That We Did Not Realize

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:

There is not enough talent in the industry to develop IoT solutions. When we launched our IoT platform in 2017, we thought people would subscribe to it and use it in the IoT deployment. Unfortunately, the take-up is very slow. People are not aware of how to use them or connect any sensors.
Talent is still the Universities. If the industry doesn’t have enough talent, most likely they should still be in the Colleges or Universities. But even in 2017, IoT is still very new to many educational institutions. Not many of their current courses embed with complete elements of IoT, which means learning IoT applications and their benefits, but the ability to have hands-on IoT projects and learn all the four aspects of IoT such as Sensors, Connectivity, Middleware, and Analytics.
Not enough knowledge to train Favoriot platform. Letting users learn using the IoT middleware via YouTube videos is also a big mistake because many still prefer a formal course rather than self-training. Proper training is mandatory, and YouTube resources should be supplementary resources.
Customers don’t know how to start their IoT journey. Many are still trying to grasp how IoT impacts their business. And what it takes to start transforming their organizations with intelligent solutions.
IoT Budget was not in place. Too many stakeholders make the decision process slower, and they are late in justifying their ioT budget. Organizations can’t comprehend how much it cost to deploy an IoT solution. Where should it start, and who should manage this?
There is no catalyst to create their IoT projects. Before Covid-19 happened in 2020, the digital transformation process in many businesses was prolonged.
We did not take the IoT training opportunity. Many opportunities arise, but we neglect that opportunity simply because we thought we should focus on building our IoT platform and marketing them.

Building IoT Community for Commercialisation

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.

3 Ways to Become a Thought Leader

If you’re passionate about your field and know how to stand out, then you can quickly become a thought leader.

You’re passionate about your field, and you know how to stand out. You’ve built a portfolio of work in that area that you’re proud of. Now, you have the chance to show the world how awesome you are. With a little bit of dedication and focus, you can quickly become a thought leader—a person who people look up to and trust for advice.

3 Ways to Become a Thought Leader Click To Tweet

Here are three (3) ways to become a thought leader:

(1) Build a Strong Following

If you want to become a thought leader on social media, the first thing to do is build a strong following.

There are many ways of doing this, but the most effective ones are:

Make sure your followers are interested in what you have to say. If they aren’t, they won’t be interested in following you.
Be active.
Respond to comments and questions and encourage people to follow you.

Get involved with other people’s content and respond to it as well. You can also build your community. Create a group that shares similar interests and join others’ groups. Build relationships – your followers will become your friends, and your friends will become your followers. The more you interact with them, the more likely they will follow you. You may think that you are not good at building relationships, but that is a mistake.

The best way to do this is to have a blog that focuses on the same subject as your podcast. For example, if your podcast is about technology, create a blog about technology-related topics. Then, you can link your podcast to your blog and vice versa. If people read your blog and listen to your podcast, they’re likely to click through and visit your website. I’ve been asked by many newbie bloggers what the difference is between their blogs and my podcasts. And honestly, there isn’t much of a difference.

(2) Content Marketing

The third thing to do is to share quality content regularly. To stay consistent and build credibility, you should make sure that the majority of the content you share falls within one category or theme.

If your blog is a mix of many categories, you’re probably going to end up being just another “generic” blog that nobody will read. That said, I suggest that you focus on only one category in your content sharing. You might even want to limit it to two or three. The more categories you add, the less effective your content sharing will be.

(3) Brand voice

The next step is to develop your brand voice, which will be unique to you.

This is a combination of your logo and how you speak about yourself. If you’re a business coach, your brand voice will be different from an entrepreneur’s. The same goes for the voice of your employees. Brand voice can include:

Your company logo
The tone and language of your marketing material
The way you speak on social media
Your business mission statement
Your tone and style of communication
The tone of voice used in your emails
The voice of your website

Social media tools allow you to share your content across multiple platforms easily. They can help you create a brand and a reputation that people will trust. This is why it’s so crucial that you have a unique voice and can connect with people. Be authentic to build a reputation for yourself.

This means that you should be willing to share your life experiences, as well as your opinions. You should also be open about your struggles, fears, failures, and successes. You should never make excuses, but you should always be willing to talk about the things that you’ve been through. This is because these things will help you to connect with other people. When people can relate to your experiences, they will be more likely to read your blog and other social media channels.

Conclusion

The first way to become a thought leader is to understand that people will follow you if they believe you know something they don’t. The second way to become a thought leader is to use content marketing to spread your thoughts, ideas, and expertise to others. Third, it’s essential to have a voice. Your opinion matters and your voice counts. You may not be able to persuade others to agree with you. However, you can influence them by influencing your audience. People are always listening to their customers, and they’re always looking for new insights into their industry. Be part of the conversation, and people will follow you.

Related article: How to Become a Thought Leader – The Beginning

How to Become a Thought Leader – The Beginning

Here’s my personal story how I began my IoT Thought Leadership journey. From Zero to an Influencer.

From Zero to an IoT Thought Leader. When does it all start?

Here’s the story.

One of my staff bumped into me, and he mentioned, “Congratulations, Dr. Mazlan, I saw your name as one of the IoT Thought Leaders.“

I was very shocked and asked. “Where did you get the news?” and he said, “I saw in one of the Internet reports.“

He gave me the link, and I quickly viewed the report from Onalytica entitled “The Internet of Tings 2014 – Top 100 Thought Leaders.” Wow! It was a pleasant surprise.

A couple of weeks earlier, I was very depressed and frustrated when my boss did not approve my application to attend IoT Asia 2014. I applied for the trip with two of my staff to attend the first IoT event in the region, yet only two of my staff applications were approved but not mine.

Our organization started the work on IoT almost two years earlier, and I thought this would be my best opportunity to hear from the industry leaders.

But the news that my staff brought to me was very unexpected. I wondered – how do I get to be selected by a prestigious organization like Onalytica?

The news spread very fast in the organization, with many people congratulating me. And one of them is the HR Vice President; she congratulated, “Dr. Mazlan, you are now a Thought Leader. That’s an amazing achievement!“

But since I have never bothered to know what a “Thought Leader is,” I began to wonder what I did to gain that recognition? And what exactly is a Thought Leader?

How Onalytica Picked the Top 100 IoT Thought Leaders

Onalytica took in all Twitter conversations using the hashtags #IoT and #InternetOfThings and created a network of the top stakeholders discussing the subject. The network diagram of the top 100 is shown below.

I was thrilled to be ranked No. 20th on the list with Kevin Ashton (Father of IoT ranked 11th). And, of course, very proud to be the only Malaysian (or probably Asian) on the list!

But really, how do I reach that stage? Is it by accident? In a way, most probably the answer is yes, but I didn’t realize that the things I did were actually how a Thought Leader should do – by influencing others.

It started probably 1 or 2 years earlier when my team was working on a research area called Wireless Sensor Network, 6LoWPAN (IPv6 Low Powered Area Network), and Internet of Things (IoT).

And during 2012 to 2014, I was a frequent social media user on LinkedIn and Twitter. Whatever I read on IoT topics, I will share this on Twitter and LinkedIn and use that hashtag #IoT. This includes sharing my thoughts about the industry in IoT.

This was when my circle of influence widened with more Twitter users following my Tweets. That’s how these Tweets are captured and analyzed by Onalytica.

The Start of an IoT Thought Leadership

Two years later, in 2016, I was the first Malaysian IoT Speaker in IoT Asia 2016 (“Issues and Challenges of Deploying a Smart Citizen Engagement Solution,” IoT Asia 2016, Singapore Expo, 30-31 March 201). The same event was when my boss rejected my application to attend in 2014. This time, the host invited me to speak with all expenses paid.

That was the beginning of the Thought Leadership journey, whereby I was invited to many speaking engagements as Keynote Speaker, Invited Speaker, TEDx Speaker, and many others. I created an IoT Blog called “IoT World” which became my official channel to share my thoughts and knowledge.

Other than the recognition from Onalytica (Onalytica Report can be downloaded here), I was ranked among Top 50 Global Thought Leaders on the Internet of Things (February 2019) and Digital Disruption (October 2019) by Thinkers360, Top 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR Congress 2017, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2017 & 2018,

It all started with a rejection….. From Zero to an IoT Thought Leader
Dr. Mazlan Abbas

How Lifelogging Change The Way I Track My Life

Lifelogging is the act of recording and analyzing your daily activities as a way of finding out more about yourself and your life. By doing this, you can discover hidden patterns in your behavior and life; you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, gain valuable insights into your goals, dreams, and aspirations, and much more. This process has increased your quality of life in many different ways.

There are many benefits to lifelogging. This is one of the most exciting times in the history of humankind. With today’s technology (digital camera and smartphone), you can live forever. The only limit to your health and happiness now is your own imagination! Lifelogging helps you keep a record of your life for you and your family after you are gone.

Lifelogging via Gyroscope App

I have been using Gyroscope as my Lifelogging app, and it has recorded my daily activities since 2018. Gyroscope helps you manage the many aspects of your life by giving you an easy-to-use interface to track everything that matters to you. It tracks your days, weeks, months, and years in precise detail. And depending on the apps you integrate with, Gyroscope can bring together your sleep patterns, productivity, fitness activities, and Apple Health data.

One particularly tracking pattern that’s worth looking at is the Number of hours online and whether its productive or not. We can easily observed that pre-Covid (2019), the average online hours is about 1,000 hours as compared during the travelling restrictions and work from home activities. The online activity has increased by 50% !

And if we see how the app tracked the number of places in 2020 and 2021, it was cut down by more than 60%. The physical meetings has now been compensated by the online meetings.

If we subscribed to it’s Premium subscription (Mine is RM 294.90 for Track Pro. There are many types of Subscription options), we have access to much more reports which are beautifully displayed. Although a great number of reports that can be shared in the form of Cards from its mobile app, lot more charts and analysis can be seen from the web portal.

Health Score (Seems I need to take care of my Health in 2022!)

Quantified-Self and Lifelogging Meets Internet of Things (IOT) from Dr. Mazlan Abbas

How to Become a Thought Leader (And Win)

Who is a thought leader? A thought leader has significant influence and credibility in their field of expertise. They are often well known and admired by the people they influence. They may be the subject of books and articles, but more importantly, they impact other people’s lives. Think of people like Gary Vaynerchuk, Simon Sinek, or Tony Robbins. They are all thought leaders.

How to become a thought leader?

It’s simple. All you have to do is spend your time and effort reading the best thinkers in your field. As you read, you’ll notice that most of them have the same basic things in common. They are all well-educated, they’ve thought deeply about their subject matter, and they’re usually knowledgeable.

In addition, you’ll find that they’ve created an intellectual community around their ideas. They share their thoughts, which helps them understand themselves, their ideas, and their impact on others. Finally, they’re constantly pushing the boundaries of their thinking.

Why is it essential to be a thought leader?

In business, being a thought leader can be a potent tool. If you want to succeed in your business, you need to become one. You need to think out of the box and develop new ideas that others may not have considered. It is essential to become a thought leader because it will give you a competitive edge over others.

When you are a thought leader, you can influence others in your industry. If you can influence other people, then this means that you can get their attention and even persuade them to adopt your ideas. For this reason, being a thought leader can be a potent tool. But how do you become a thought leader? There are many ways to go about doing this, but there are also certain traits that you need to possess.

What makes a good thought leader?

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about what makes a good thought leader. And I came up with some thoughts that are worth sharing in my humble opinion.

Here’s the list:

Know your audience and be yourself. This is so obvious. But I don’t know how many people take it seriously. The more you know your audience, the better you tailor your message to their needs.

And if you are not who you are, you might as well not exist. This is one of the reasons why I like to say that you should write your own book and be your own publisher.

If you want to get a book published, you need to have something valuable to share. So, be yourself. That is the only way to get it right. Know your audience and be yourself. Be the best at what you do. Have a clear vision for what you want to accomplish.

But don’t ever stop learning. And if you can’t find your niche, create one. One of my favorite quotes is, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” This means that you must first be the change you wish to see in yourself. So, be the change you want to see in yourself.

How Can I Be a Thought Leader in My Niche Area? Click To Tweet

How can I be a thought leader in my niche area?

As a writer, there are many ways you can develop your thought leadership. Here’s a simple guide:

Find the most influential people in your niche. These people are often leaders in their industry. They write books, articles, and they’re active on social media. Find the most influential marketers in your niche if you’re a marketer.

Follow them on social media. Most of these people have a blog or a Twitter account to share great content. They’ll probably follow you back.
Read what they publish. The more time you spend reading their content, the more you’ll be able to incorporate it into your own.
Write something unique. Don’t just copy and paste what they write.
Write something that makes your audience think, “I need to read this.”
Get the attention of these influencers. You can do this by writing a guest post on their blog or sharing their social media content.
Once they start following you, ask them to review your book or article. The more people you get to review your work, the better.
Finally, ask them for some feedback. They’ll appreciate the opportunity to help a writer improve their craft.

How can I achieve being a thought leader?

Here are some tips to get started:

Be the person others want to follow. This might seem like a cop-out, but you have to think about this from the other person’s perspective. You want to be the person they look up to and admire.
It’s tough to be someone else’s role model.
Focus on the positive There are so many things in your life that are great, but you just need to focus on those. When I first started looking at my life this way, I was amazed by how better I felt.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Focus on what you can control.
Have a plan of action and stick to it. If you set yourself up to fail, you’ll fail.
Think about the best version of yourself.
Know your strengths and weaknesses.
Understand that everyone has their own journey.
Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Believe in yourself and know that you are enough.
Take time for yourself.
Get out there and do something that you love.

I used most of the tips mentioned above, and that’s how I achieved from zero to an Internet of Things (IoT) influencer within less than a year. I wrote two eBooks regarding IoT – IoT Notes and Your IoT Journey.

Ups and Downs of an IoT Entrepreneur

I love to hear your thoughts and comments about Thought Leadership. Kindly leave your comments below. Thanks!

How the Amount of Views Encourage Blogging

One of the main reasons people stopped to Blog is because they are easily discourage with the low numbers of views and visitors to their Blog.

I have to confess – I love to see the number of views and number of visitors to my Blog. It gives me some encouragement whenever I see activity on my Blog, although I am aware it is still very new.

I started to write my first two articles on November 17, 2021, i.e., when I officially published the Blog for the public. It is very new, and I am struggling to make the look and feel of the Blog easy to navigate with some content such as my background, books, speaking experience, Blog, YouTube, Podcasts, Projects, and Press Info.

The first two articles are:

How the Amount of Views Encourage Me to Blog More Click To Tweet

The Blog Traffic Stats After Four (4) Weeks

One of the frustrating parts is when I Google the name “Mazlan Abbas Blog,” the website does not even appear in the Google Ranking!

Here’s where many Bloggers would start to get very frustrated and abandon their Blogging activities. In reality (as described by many professional bloggers), it’s very typical, that we will only see the impact after several months!

Below is my traffic stats that showed the ups and downs. The “ups” is because I mainly promoted the posts on my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – and Facebook seems to be the highest referrals.

Surprisingly my top 3 countries (other than my home country Malaysia) are the United States, India, and Ireland.

Mazlan Abbas Blog – Countries of Readers

Types of Blog Posts

The idea of my Blog is for Personal Blogging – sharing my journey into the world of Entrepreneurship, which mainly referred back to my business Blog called IoT World.

By monitoring the article’s number of views, I will understand what content attracted the readers.

Top be fair, the Blog is still at its infancy stage. It requires constant update with high-quality contents. I will be revisiting this statistics monthly and monitor the progress.

I am now using All-In-One SEO (AISEO) plug-in to help increase the SEO. And I have also followed many tips given by many other veteran Bloggers.

Kindly leave your comments and share your thoughts. I love to hear them.

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?

How We Build a New Generation-IoT Movement Click To Tweet

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.

Generation-IoT – The Key to Business Survival in 21st Century from Dr. Mazlan Abbas

Slideshare

Articles worth reading:

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.

On a Journey IoTising Business Click To Tweet

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:

Test your ideas early.
Get feedback regarding your product and iterate until you get the product-market fit.
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 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/

Articles worth reading:

How We Build Our Third IoT Product

Favoriot IoT Platform is the third IoT product that we developed. This is the turning point of our business – To IoTise Every Business.

It took us nearly two years to build our first IoT product – Raqib. Mainly because we have so many things to do, and we are very new to this kind of IoT entrepreneurship.

Since Raqib is an end-to-end solution, we need to identify the partner for the hardware since we can’t build the wearable in-house. Furthermore, the devices need to send data and connect to our IoT platform, create a mobile app, and develop a CRM system.

In 2018, we started with a simple trial, and later in 2019, we were able to have our first few customers using the solution during their trip to Hajj.

As per the second IoT product, Favorsense, we built it within a year and quickly introduced it to the market. We received a lot of feedback which we used to improve the solution.

But then, we also realized that we already had our third IoT product, i.e., the IoT middleware itself, while building the rest of the ioT products. Still, we never thought of offering this solution to others. We have begun to get user feedback by allowing users to use it for free until we started charging them in March 2019.

The Problem Statement

When we built our first IoT product, we learned that it is such a massive effort and takes a lot of resources – time and money. The same goes for our second product.

We decided if somehow we could collaborate with others to develop other IoT solutions by using our platform. We thought that the country had many IoT talents ready to build its IoT solutions, and we were wrong!

There are not many takers who can jump straight into the IoT world and build their IoT products. That’s when I realized the country is lacking this kind of talent? Where are they?

I am fortunate to be in many local Universities as their Industrial Advisory Panel or Adjunct Professors. That’s when we realized many of the current syllabi did not cover structured content about IoT. However, many universities are excited to get their students to select the IoT as their Final Year Projects (FYP). Still, unfortunately, many of the students have to learn on their own.

In the industry, they have started to get more interested in how IoT impacts their business but are unsure how to build or deploy their innovative solutions using IoT.

Even the whole ecosystem of IoT in Malaysia is not very strong because there are not many players as yet.

For Favoriot, we see this as an opportunity because our IoT platform can become the enabler to learn IoT and be used in commercial IoT deployment.

How Big is the Market

According to Mordor Intelligence, the IoT market reached $761.4 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $1.39 trillion by 2026.

There are four (4) components in building end-to-end IoT solutions – Sensors, Connectivity, IoT platforms, and Applications. We have touched a sweet spot, i.e., to become a preferred IoT platform for any IoT deployments.

IoT was “officially” introduced in Malaysia in 2014 when the Nation launched its National IoT Strategic Framework. However, it seems to be early days, and it took some time to make people aware of its impact. However, IoT got another “jump-start” when Malaysia Industry 4WRD -National Policy on Industry 4.0 at the end of 2018.

In 2020, the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, and many industries were affected by the lockdown—the idea of using emerging technologies to solve social distancing issues. Thus, the time for the IoT market to grow is about to begin.

The IoT Solution

The reasons why we want to offer our IoT platform as the third IoT product are as follows:

In every IoT deployment or project, there will be an IoT platform component. The idea is to deploy IoT solutions without involving high cost by using a Cloud-based IoT platform.
We are not able to build and customize to all user requirements.
We want to create a platform where the students can also use in their IoT projects.
This platform also can be used for Laboratory experiments.
Thus, the platform needs to be open and easily used with user-friendly APIs
The middleware comprises security, business rules, and notification engine and supports various protocols such as MQTT, CoAP, and REST.
Offer this as Platform-as-a-Service to allow as many users to subscribe to the platform and create their own innovative IoT applications easily while maintaining the ownership of their data.
Have the ability to charge the user in various subscription Plans such as Free, Beginner, and Developer Plans. Furthermore, we can also have a customized package and make it available on-premise.
Build a Generation-IoT (Favoriot) community that can share and learn each other’s projects and success stories.
Complete documentation, tutorials, GitHub, and forums are made available.

How to Choose an IoT Platform

The Best IoT Product We Developed Click To Tweet

Go-to-Market

Initially, we started offering the free package to the Universities in early 2019; we noticed not many active users. Many of them use other competitive platforms such as ThingSpeak, ThingsBoard, or Blynk.

We realized that due to the unfamiliarity of the Favoriot platform and not many tutorials regarding the usage, we decided to compile as many use-cases, step-by=step tutorials made by some community members and upload them to our Favoriot YouTube channel.

I take the opportunity to introduce the Favoriot IoT platform in many of the invited talks, conferences, or webinars. Coupled with contests and special offers and bundled with training packages, we have reached more than 115 countries worldwide and more than 5300 users.

We started with users subscribing to the platform themselves, but now we have begun engaging with corporate users by having customized solutions.

The Growth Point

We have reached a stage whereby talents who graduated from the Universities are equipped with the knowledge of building IoT projects (and using the Favoriot IoT platform) more structured.

These new talents will become the catalyst for the growth of IoT in Malaysia and other countries around the world.

The IoT Adventure has become more enjoyable than ever!

IoT Applications

IoT Tips

Smart Cities

IoT Infographics

FAVORIOT Products and Services

IoT and IR 4.0 in Malaysia

IoT Challenges

Generation-IoT

Things About IoT

7 Mistakes That We Did Not Realize

Building IoT Community for Commercialisation

(1) Build a Strong Following

(2) Content Marketing

(3) Brand voice

Conclusion

From Zero to an IoT Thought Leader. When does it all start?

How Onalytica Picked the Top 100 IoT Thought Leaders

The Start of an IoT Thought Leadership

Lifelogging via Gyroscope App

How to become a thought leader?

Why is it essential to be a thought leader?

What makes a good thought leader?

How can I be a thought leader in my niche area?

How can I achieve being a thought leader?

The Blog Traffic Stats After Four (4) Weeks

Types of Blog Posts

The Early Days of IoT

The Beginning of Generation-IoT

Bearing Fruits and Skepticism

Articles worth reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Credit to Exeleon Magazine

Articles worth reading:

The Problem Statement

How Big is the Market

The IoT Solution

Go-to-Market

The Growth Point

Want to know more about our IoT Adventure?