A case study: How did IoT start-up Distronix change its business model to sustain growth in the pay-per-use economy

Abstract

Industrial Internet of Things emerged as one of the major technologies enabling Industry 4.0 for industries. Multiple start-ups started working in the Industrial Internet of Things field to support this new industrial revolution. Distronix, one such Industrial Internet of Things start-up of India, started operations in 2014, when companies were not even aware of Industrial Internet of Things. Distronix started executing fixed-fee projects for implementation of Industrial Internet of Things. They also started manufacturing sensors to support large customers end-to-end in their Industry 4.0 journey. With the advent of public cloud, companies started demanding pay-per-use model for the solution Distronix provided. This posed a major challenge to Distronix as they had developed technology skills focusing fixed-fee customized project delivery for their clients. The situation demanded that they change their business model from individual project delivery to creation of product sand-box with pre-registered sensors and pre-defined visualization layer to support use cases for Industrial Internet of Things implementation in multiple industry sectors. It forced Rohit Sarkar, the 26 years old entrepreneur and owner of Distronix, to upgrade capabilities of his employees and transform the business model to support pay-per-use economy popularized by public cloud providers. The case discusses the challenges Rohit faced to revamp their business model in such an emerging technology field, like, to develop new skills of the technical people to support such novel initiative, reorienting sales people towards pay as use model, developing new concept of plug and play modular product, devising innovative pricing, better alliance strategy and finding out a super early adopter.