Our house has a weird problem. There are 4 air con units in the three room house and some aircons are so close to each other that if you need to turn one ON without turning the others ON, you will need to defy the laws of physics, and sometimes even the laws of quantum mechanics and/or law of conservation of energy. Usually we end up switching one air con ON and then take a trip around the house to see what else got turned ON and then turn them OFF using our own algorithms.
This is actually a very good case for IoT. I am sure there are IoT enabled air cons out there, just the way there are thermostats. But there should really be a simple way to retrofit smartness on to mundane things. Isn’t that a good idea?
I am sure there are a lot of players. But I think most of them only work with OEM vendors to support multiple types of devices with that are already digital – like your door locks or your kitchen equipment. This is attractive proposition if you are just building your home or are redoing the electrical lines for some reason. But a vast majority of homes are not. Especially in India, it is very difficult to convince people to rewire their entire houses just to become smart. But smart appliances have a lot to offer. So, I think a small add on that is reasonably inexpensive and can securely enable smartness to the appliance it is connected to with varying degrees of smartness would easily become interesting.
Of course, the market for this is today and the near future. Most of the upcoming developers would fit smart things into their buildings anyway. On the other hand, smart things that would not shoot the budget through the roofs would be very welcome too. As on date, you don’t have reputed brands that are inexpensive. And that is because there isn’t much competition.
I think there is a good business potential here. What say?