The manufacturing industry is increasingly focused on improving business process efficiency and quality, in addition to customer experience. Frost & Sullivan's Start-Up Tracker is a resource to help the ecosystem participants identify solution providers with offerings that match industry challenges.

The Start-Up Tracker provides a rich database of start-up and niche players that have the capabilities to transform processes in manufacturing and add value to the end-user. These companies were selected based on the Frost & Sullivan best practices database, in addition to secondary research on manufacturing tech ecosystem mappings and rankings worldwide, such as the Industrial IoT Stack from CB Insights and other regional manufacturing Tech mapping and rankings.

A list of start-ups focused on manufacturing IoT was made by region, including different segments: sensors and monitoring platforms, edge devices and industrial augmented reality (AR)/ virtual reality (VR), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and edge computing, advanced and predictive analytics.
Frost & Sullivan conducted detailed primary interviews with start-ups that stand out in different regions to generate a competitive profile and understand relevant developments, strategy and value proposition.

Each company short-listed has been screened and analyzed by the analyst, and an overall score was established for each start-up based on the criteria described in this study.

To be considered a part of the IoT, any product, application, or service must be part of a larger solution that comprises these 4 elements:

• Objects that are virtualized and imbued with data measurement capabilities
• The ability to grant identities to physical and virtual objects
• Interconnections between these objects for monitoring and interaction
• The ability to generate real-time insights from data and incorporate them into existing business processes
• The Internet of Things (IoT) space is still in flux. Unlike more mature ICT verticals, the IoT space also has significant overlap with other industries
such as the automotive, energy, and manufacturing industries.
• To accurately observe and measure IoT-related economic activity, Frost & Sullivan uses the definition above to determine if a technology product, application, or service is to be considered part of the IoT.

The key digital agriculture products covered in this study are automation and control systems, wireless connectivity and sensors, and smart retail equipment and machinery. The key segments covered in this study are Edge devices & Industrial AR/VR, PaaS & Edge Computing, Sensors & Monitoring Platforms and Advanced & Predictive Analytics.

Author: Carina Goncalves