A joint conversation between RAIN Alliance and ID Tech Solutions following the Collaborate to Accelerate forum in India.
Continuing the conversation we started in India
The Collaborate to Accelerate forum in India brought together chip makers, tag and reader manufacturers, software providers, system integrators, end users and policymakers. The conversations reflected a shared belief: RAIN RFID adoption accelerates when the ecosystem works together to grow the market.
Continuing that discussion, Aileen Ryan and Saurav Khemani share their perspectives on adoption in India, practical challenges, emerging opportunities and the role of collaboration.
Q1. How do you see RAIN RFID adoption evolving in India?
Aileen Ryan | President & CEO, RAIN Alliance
India is one of the most exciting growth markets for RAIN RFID anywhere in the world. As organizations look for accurate, real-time visibility into the items moving through their operations, RAIN is increasingly the technology they turn to; it is standards-based, proven at scale globally, and cost-effective enough to deploy on billions of everyday items. We expect adoption here to accelerate as awareness grows, as interoperable, standards-based solutions make deployment simpler, as policy makers see the promise of this technology to continue to improve quality of life for citizens, and as more privately-held organizations see clear, measurable returns from their first projects. The RAIN Alliance’s role is to help that happen: championing the standards and global spectrum overlap, building awareness, and connecting the ecosystem so that success in one sector opens the door to the next.
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
I think India has reached a very interesting stage in its RAIN RFID journey. A few years ago, most conversations were about explaining the technology, how it works, and where it can be used. Today, we are increasingly having conversations about how to implement it at scale.
We are seeing interest from manufacturing, logistics, retail, infrastructure, and public-sector organizations. Businesses are beginning to understand that RAIN RFID is not simply about replacing barcodes. It is about improving visibility, reducing manual intervention, and making better operational decisions.
At the same time, I believe awareness remains one of our biggest opportunities. Many organizations know they need automation but are not always familiar with what RAIN RFID can realistically achieve. As technology providers, we need to bridge that gap through education, demonstrations, and successful implementations.
Q2. Which sectors offer the greatest opportunities?
Aileen Ryan | President & CEO, RAIN Alliance
While recognizing that many of the best-known RAIN RFID projects in India have been driven by policy (for example the incredibly ambitious FASTag program), globally retail has led the way and continues to show the clearest returns. Logistics, manufacturing and healthcare are all scaling quickly — anywhere an organization needs to know what it has, where it is, and whether it’s authentic in real time. We’re also seeing RAIN extend across the entire lifecycle of an item, supporting priorities like supply chain transparency, sustainability and circularity, and emerging requirements such as digital product passports. In India, the sheer breadth of manufacturing and the scale of logistics and supply chain operations make these especially promising.
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
India has tremendous potential across several industries, particularly manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, retail, and transportation.
Manufacturing and logistics are especially interesting because of the scale at which Indian businesses operate. Whether it is tracking returnable containers, managing warehouse inventory, monitoring industrial assets, or improving dispatch accuracy, even small improvements in visibility can create significant operational value.
We are also seeing opportunities in railways, infrastructure, automotive, and retail. What makes India unique is that we have both large-scale infrastructure projects and a growing number of private enterprises investing in automation.
For me, the biggest opportunity is not limited to any one industry. It is wherever organizations are still relying on manual identification and tracking processes that can be made faster, more accurate, and more reliable.
Q3. What challenges do Indian organizations face when adopting RAIN RFID?
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
One of the biggest challenges is understanding that RAIN RFID is not a one-size-fits-all technology. We often receive inquiries where the requirement is simply an RAIN RFID tag or reader, without much clarity about the application, operating environment, or expected outcome.
But a successful deployment depends on several factors, including the material being tagged, read distance, antenna positioning, surrounding environment, and integration with existing systems.
Another challenge is moving beyond a successful demonstration to a reliable deployment. A solution that works in a controlled environment must also perform consistently on an actual production floor or inside a busy warehouse.
I believe this is where technical consultation, proper site assessments, realistic expectations, and user training become extremely important. We need to focus not just on selling the technology but on ensuring that it solves the customer’s problem.
Q4. What foundations matter most for getting RAIN RFID right?
Aileen Ryan | President & CEO, RAIN Alliance
A standards-based foundation is what makes everything else possible. Being standards-based works on two levels. The first is interoperability — any compliant reader and tag work together, so deployments can combine hardware from different vendors with confidence. The second is how each item is identified and encoded: a unique, standards-based identifier written to every tag, so the data reads the same way across your systems and your partners’. Get that foundation right and RAIN data becomes reliable and shareable across the entire supply chain, which is what unlocks the business value. It’s a big part of what the RAIN Alliance focuses on: maintaining the standards and numbering systems, and offering encoding guidance, training and certification, so the whole ecosystem builds on common ground.
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
I would say the foundation is a combination of the right technology, the right application design, and a clear understanding of standards.
Choosing a reader or tag is only one part of the process. We also need to consider how items are identified, how information is captured, and how that information moves into the customer’s software or enterprise systems.
Interoperability is particularly important. Customers should have the confidence that their solutions can evolve without being completely dependent on one hardware supplier.
This is also why I believe technical education is essential. When system integrators and end users understand RAIN RFID fundamentals, frequency regulations, encoding, and system design, they are in a much better position to build reliable and scalable solutions.
Q5. How can collaboration accelerate adoption?
Aileen Ryan | President & CEO, RAIN Alliance
Collaboration is the single biggest accelerant we have, it’s the whole idea behind Collaborate to Accelerate. No one company, and no single part of the ecosystem, can grow this market alone. When chip makers, hardware manufacturers, software providers, integrators and end users share what they’ve learned and build on common, interoperable standards, organizations move from awareness to confident deployment far faster. That is where the RAIN Alliance comes in: as the collective voice of the industry — maintaining the standards, protecting the radio spectrum RAIN technology depends on, engaging with regulators, and building the community that makes broad adoption possible. And regional forums like the one in India are where that collaboration becomes real.
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
I strongly believe that we need to grow the RAIN RFID ecosystem together rather than look at every opportunity purely from an individual company’s perspective.
India has hardware manufacturers, software developers, system integrators, technology distributors, and end users, but there is still a need for stronger knowledge sharing between them.
The Collaborate to Accelerate forum was a good example of why bringing everyone together matters. We need more such conversations, technical workshops, practical demonstrations, and opportunities for the industry to learn from actual deployments.
Our collaboration with the RAIN Alliance is also focused on strengthening technical awareness and training in India, particularly for system integrators and technology professionals.
When the ecosystem becomes more knowledgeable and capable, customers gain confidence, implementations improve, and ultimately the entire industry benefits.
Q6. What role can Indian technology providers play?
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
I think Indian technology providers have an important responsibility because we understand the requirements and practical challenges of deploying technology in this market.
India is a diverse market. A solution designed for one environment may not necessarily work in another. Customers need technology partners who can help them select the right hardware, evaluate the site conditions, integrate with their existing systems, and provide support beyond installation.
At ID Tech, our focus has been on developing RAIN RFID hardware and supporting partners with the technical knowledge required to implement it effectively.
I also believe India has an opportunity to become more than just a large market for RIAN RFID adoption. With local manufacturing capabilities, engineering expertise, and a growing technology ecosystem, Indian companies can contribute to the global RAIN RFID industry as technology developers and solution providers.
Q7. India has seen several policy-driven RFID initiatives. Which examples demonstrate the scale and potential of RFID adoption in the country?
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
India has some very interesting examples of how government-led initiatives can accelerate RFID adoption at a national scale.
FASTag is probably the most recognizable example. It has made RAIN RFID a part of everyday life for millions of people through electronic toll collection. What is particularly interesting is that most people use the technology without necessarily realizing that they are interacting with RFID.
Beyond highways, Indian Railways has adopted RAIN RFID-based automatic identification for rolling stock, helping improve the visibility and identification of wagons and other railway assets across the network.
We are also seeing initiatives around container and logistics visibility, including the Logistics Data Bank programme associated with the National Logistics Data Services (NLDS), where RAIN RFID-enabled identification has supported container tracking across logistics infrastructure.
There are also opportunities across public-sector asset management, utilities, and other infrastructure programmes.
What these examples demonstrate is that policy and large-scale institutional adoption can create awareness, establish infrastructure, and encourage the development of a stronger domestic technology ecosystem.
For me, the next step is to translate this experience into wider adoption across private industries, where the same technology can improve operational efficiency and traceability.
Q8. What is your shared vision for RAIN RFID in India by 2030?
Aileen Ryan | President & CEO, RAIN Alliance
Our vision is a world where every item can connect to the Internet of Things through RAIN technology, and India has the scale and the ambition to be one of the markets that leads the way. By 2030, we’d like to see RAIN RFID established as a familiar part of India’s digital infrastructure: widely understood, supported by a deep base of trained professionals and interoperable, standards-based solutions, and delivering measurable value across industries, and across the full lifecycle of the items it connects. Getting there is a shared effort, which is exactly why collaboration matters.
Saurav Khemani | Managing Director, ID Tech Solutions
By 2030, I would like to see RAIN RFID become a much more familiar and widely adopted technology across Indian industries.
My vision is that businesses should not have to start every RFID project by understanding the basics from scratch. We should have a strong ecosystem of trained system integrators, technology providers, and end users who understand how to implement the technology effectively.
I would also like to see more locally developed RAIN RFID hardware, greater adoption of global standards, and stronger collaboration between Indian and international technology companies.
Ultimately, success should not be measured only by the number of RAIN RFID tags or readers deployed. It should be measured by the operational improvements we create, whether that is better inventory accuracy, improved traceability, reduced manual effort, or greater supply chain visibility.
If we can combine India’s scale with the right technical knowledge, standards, and collaboration, I believe India can become one of the leading markets for RAIN RFID innovation and adoption.