11 May From Sensors to Smart Cities: IoT’s Role in India’s Sustainability Goals
Banner image generated using ChatGPT, OpenAI, May 09, 2025
In an earlier article, “Smart Tech, Sustainable Future: Global View of How IoT is Leading the Green Transition”, we discussed about the increase in adoption of IoT across various sectors globally. In this article, we seek to explore the use of IoT in India especially, in relation to Sustainability and climate action.
As per a IMARC Group report, as of 2024 the IoT market in India is $1.4 Billion and it is expected to grow at 10.2% (CAGR) between 2025-2033 to reach $3.6 Billion [1]. There is however very limited data on specific use of IoT for Sustainability goals with the help of Startup innovation. This article seeks to explore the use of IoT for Sustainability goals in various sectors and also by Sustainability startups with the help of available data and by studying some examples in action.
IoT and Sustainability in India
As mentioned in earlier articles, we have prepared a curated a list of 450+ Social Startups in India from publicly available portfolios of Incubators, databases, Investors, etc. after reviewing 2000+ startups from these sources. This source includes Social Impact Incubators like Social Alpha, Tech incubators from IIT-M and IIT-B, Investors like Acumen, Business incubators like ISB and NSRCEL at IIMB, etc.
When we looked at approx. 171 Sustainability Startups in this database, approx. 28 use IOT in some form. This is like an undercount as in many cases, IoT tech startups have reported themselves as AI startups, reflecting the buzz around AI. While curating this database, we saw a similar trend around other emerging technologies like Computer vision, NLP, etc. Additionally, 6 Agri Tech Startups use IoT in some form.
The view from this limited data set is both confirmed and contradicted from other large source. Though most of these sources don’t look at the startup ecosystem exclusively.
For example, despite the stated goal of installing 250 million smart electric meters by the Government of India, as of November 2024 only 7.3 million smart meters have been installed in India. On other hand, in survey conducted by Shrikaant Kulkarni, Adjunct Professor, Victorian Institute of Technology, Sydney, Australia, it is clear that IoT adoption in India’s argi sector is moving at very good pace. In this survey it is reported that 65% of the surveyed farmers use IoT devices in some manner with soil sensors being the most popular ones. This uptake is not a surprise, as the survey reports that 70% of farmers see an increase in crop yield resulting from IoT usage [2]. According to Grand View Research, the size of India’s agriculture IoT market is estimated to be $1,385.5 million in 2024 with growth rate of CAGR 6.6% from 2025 to 2030 to reach $2,123.2 million by 2030 [3].
While not all this growth is in the Sustainability sector directly, sustainability is likely to be a substantial element of IoT adoption in Agriculture as discussed in previous article [Smart Tech, Sustainable Future: Global View of How IoT is Leading the Green Transition]. The Government of India’s goal of making 100 Smart cities is well known. This will also include IoT as one of the main enabling technologies. For example, as the UN report on Smart City highlights, many cities in India like, “Greater Hyderabad and Warangal, the setting up of an Adaptive Traffic Signal Control System, which adjusts signal timings in real-time based on traffic density, has reduced congestion with a 15% increase in travel speed” [4].
Innovation Stories:
As hard data is missing let’s look at a few stories where IoT innovation is being used to help India achieve Sustainability goals:
- Ecowarp: with a mission of “mera desh, zero waste,” Ecowrap uses IoT powered dustbins and AI to help monitor waste segregation. With their four colour-coded and IoT-powered dustbins, which are equipped with sensors for plastic, glass, paper and organic (biodegradables) waste, they can ensure proper segregation at source. They provide services to the HORECA sector and also partner with the Jaipur municipality to help monitor consumer level waste segregation. They further recycle and upcycle this waste for a more sustainable model [5]. Ecowrap was part of AIC-IIITH’s Akash program for Social Tech startups.
- Intech Harness: Pune based Intech Harness is a Agri tech startup with was part of AIC-IIITH Raftaar Covid Support Acceleration Program. They have developed Jalaprayah Autotech Pump Controller, a Patented, IoT-enabled, timer-based pump controller. This controller can interface with all existing motors and switch them on and off as per requirement. It also takes into account any power disruption and adjusts pump timings accordingly. This precise operation brings relief to the farmers and reduces water & carbon footprint [6].
- Urja.Io: Supported by Tata powers Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)-enabled solution provider by Urja uses smart sensors and analytics platform to detect energy losses and predict maintenance of production machinery. This allows small and medium businesses to save on their electricity consumption [7].
- Zodhya: Part of AIC-IIITH ESIIP program for Green Tech Startups, Zodhya provides plug-in AI devices that reduce energy consumption, lower carbon footprint, and enhance energy consumption efficiency for HVAC systems in commercial settings on average by 30%. Its Soul, IoT platform helps organisations streamline operations, quantify emissions with respect to electricity usage and provides ML generated monthly reports with actionable insights to improve operational inefficiencies, including in undertaking predictive maintenance [8].
- Bariflo Cybernetics Private Limited: They use IoT, machine learning, robotics and automation to solve the water crisis of tomorrow and provide solution for aquafarmers, co-operatives, villages, communities, cities & industries. They use industry 4.0 compliant tech for water body management system based on Fluid dynamics, IOT, robotics, AI [9]. They are solving the problem of water quality degradation in lakes, reservoirs and aquafarms [10].
- Smart City Living Lab @ IIITH: Part of the Smart Cities Mission, an initiative launched by the Government of India, a Center of Excellence on IoT for Smart Cities was launched in January 2019 by IIIT Hyderabad. As part of this, it established India’s first Living Lab on campus – Smart City Living Lab @ IIITH that works in an urban region to improve three value domains: social, economic, and environmental. With it, the entire IIITH campus acts as a Smart city test bed to help startups and innovators deploy their IoT-based solutions in the real world. Every 10 minutes multiple sensors from across the campus update data on water, smart spaces, and air quality from different locations. Various ongoing researches in the living lab include Power Distribution and Consumption with IoT interface using LoRaWAN (<1GHZ), Weather, Pollution, Solar, Water Distribution and Crowd Monitoring [11].
Conclusion
The data and examples discussed highlight that IoT is emerging as a vital enabler of sustainability in India, even if its adoption is uneven across sectors. The Indian IoT market is valued at $1.4 billion as of 2024. While only some sustainability-focused startups explicitly report using IoT—often overshadowed by the broader AI classifications—its impact is nonetheless tangible. In agriculture, 65% of the surveyed farmers already use IoT tools like soil sensors, with 70% noting improved yields. Examples such as Ecowrap’s IoT-powered waste segregation, Intech Harness’s smart irrigation pumps, and Zodhya’s energy-saving HVAC solutions underscore how startups are applying IoT to address sustainability challenges. The Smart City Living Lab at IIITH further exemplifies how real-time IoT data can drive urban environmental improvements. Together, these initiatives indicate that while data gaps remain, IoT is poised to be a cornerstone of India’s sustainability journey.
Footnotes:
[1] https://www.imarcgroup.com/india-internet-of-things-market?
[4] https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2024/12/un_smart_city_outlook.pdf; https://trafficinfratech.com/performance-focused-adaptive-traffic-signal-control-system-effective-operations-along-with-implementation/
[5] https://inc42.com/startups/how-jaipurs-ecowrap-is-using-ai-to-make-waste-segregation-sustainable; https://www.instagram.com/ecowrap.in/reel/DG0v0W_hOdn/ ; https://ecowrap.in/
[6] http://www.intechharness.com/
[8] https://www.zodhyatech.com/soul.html; https://blog.zodhyatech.com/how-saverx-helped-a-large-commercial-building-reduce-their-hvac-costs-sry8ms
[9] https://bc-pl.com/; https://www.linkedin.com/company/bariflo-labs/
[11] https://smartcityresearch.iiit.ac.in/living_lab/; https://newsmeter.in/hyderabad/smart-campus-indias-first-living-lab-opened-at-iiit-hyderabad-703108