View: A 5G opportunity for Indian startups

As the world rolls out the fifth-generation technology standard for cellular networks, or 5G, its appeal in India is limited to being a future-ready feature on a fancy phone that signals the owner’s tech savvy. After all, widespread 5G services are still months, if not years, away in India. However, 5G is a big opportunity for India’s thriving startup ecosystem, to devise and design new use cases, such as the retail industry solution jointly unveiled recently by Verizon Business, Deloitte and SAP. It uses 5G’s capacity for extensive machine-to-machine communication, in conjunction with Edge computing and advanced data analytics to vastly improve the retail store experience for the consumer and to optimise inventory management, both replenishing shelves from stocks and ordering fresh stocks.