In the automobiles sector, some recent products such as Mahindra’s XUV 500, the Reva electric car and (arguably) the Tata Nano have breathed life into that possibility.
In the technology realm, though, it’s been a dismal showing.
The controversial Aakash tablet looms over the sector as a metaphor for the country’s capabilities.
Yes, Indian electronic manufacturers such as Micromax have emerged as serious local players, but much of the work that goes into bringing out a phone from their stables is undertaken by fabless (chip design) companies such as Qualcomm, as well as chip foundries located abroad.
All of that is expected to change with the building of a semiconductor fabricator (fab), which the government expects to announce soon.
However, rather than joining the rat race to churn out cutting-edge chips for global manufacturers, the best opportunity for these chips may lurk right here, under our very noses.
Or that’s the logic that co-founder of HCL, Ajay Chowdhry, has been urgently pushing the government towards.
As the co-chair of the Core Advisory Group for Research and Development in the Electronics Sector, Chowdhry, along with several of his colleagues in the industry, has arrived at a conclusion: A huge opportunity lies in making ‘Made for India’ products that the masses can consume.
CAREL members have, therefore, been frenetically busy setting up workshops and outlining strategies. “The idea is to go deep into the product,” says Chowdhry.
Driving this revolution
A result of CAREL’s work is a list of six product categories that will be made ready with the appropriate carrots to lure Indian manufacturers.
They are smart metres, set-top boxes, rural mobile phones, micro ATMs, healthcare diagnostic devices and tablets.
A target of four products in each category will be rolled out over time.
“The Indian market has certain needs that global products just don’t cater to,” says Jaswinder Ahuja, managing director of Cadence Design Systems, India.
As the previous piece in this series pointed out, a cheaper, less-cutting-edge fab, which is what is most likely to come up here, could suddenly make what would otherwise be a grand vision into a reality.
“Something has to happen to break the cycle of global dependence of chips and the paucity of domestic products in India,” says Ahuja. This could be it.
India is not the only one that is thinking along these lines. China’s recent 12th five-year Plan has strongly articulated the need to promote domestic innovation.
According to a McKinsey report on the semiconductor industry, several leading multinational companies there have launched research and development centres focusing on the domestic market.
General Electric as well as Siemens have both done so by catering to local market demand and local priorities such as rural healthcare and sustainable development.
GE has introduced many breakthrough devices in India, but few of them go through an end-to-end manufacturing solution in the country.
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