The need of promoting innovation and harnessing the potential of Internet of Things (IoT) is imperative for solving practical problems in India, said Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan. All initiatives in IoT should translate into business models which can be replicated across sectors, she added.Ms Sundararajan was inaugurating a seminar on IoT organised by Deprtment of Telecommunications in collaboration with GSMA, New Delhi.Ms Sundararajan also underlined the need to work across silos in technology, policy, regulation, licenses, and use cases. There should be a drive to spread awareness and initiate capacity building across several key ministries like health, agriculture, transport, urban development and energy as use cases will be initiated from these ministries.The seminar is the first among series of capacity building programmes planned with the support of GSMA as per the bilateral agreement between DoT and GSMA during Mobile World Congress 2018 at Barcelona. Technology considerations for IoT, including the spectrum allocation, business models for IoT, and policy considerations were discussed during the seminar. IoT deployment has been included as one of the important focus technology area in the draft National Digital Communication Policy 2018 released recently. Evolving IoT ecosystem in India is likely to accelerate the IoT deployment leading to socio economic development.As per recent estimates, IoT market in India stands at $5.6 million with 200 million connected units in 2016. This is expected to grow to $15 billion with 2.7 billion units by 2020. Globally, the number of IoT devices is estimated to have increased 31% year-over-year to 8.4 billion in 2017. It is projected that there will be 30 billion devices by 2020. The global market value of IoT is projected to reach $7.1 trillion by 2020.Mr Prabhash Singh, Member (Services/Technology), DoT, Ms EmanuelaLecchi, Head Public Policy – APAC, Govt and Regulatory Affairs, GSMA, Mr Rajiv Sinha DDG NT, DoT, Mr VikramRawal, Senior Policy Director, Govt and Regulatory Affairs, GSMA, and Dr Rajesh Sharma, DDG(Trg), DoT led the sessions.