Indian Electronics Products A $100 Billion Opportunity

For building an Indian product industry, it is important to focus on activities that contribute to highest amount of value-addition and also lie in the sweet-spot of our core strengths. The majority of value-addition in electronic products comes from R&D, IPR creation, hardware, software, and product design, and then marketing, branding, and sales activities. Fortunately, R&D and IPR creation is a knowledge and people-driven activity, in which India has a global edge that we must leverage, and which requires relatively less capital investments. 

 

                                      

Due to sophisticated Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and emergence of highcapacity programmable devices, even hardware design has become similar to software development, an area in which India has established global leadership.

When I graduated as an Electronics Engineer, I found there were not much choice in finding a job purely in Electronics. What we were offered were management trainee sort of jobs which was disheartening. Then I found that Indian companies don't do r&d and when I went to US I found that they have so many National Laboratories along with Private endowments supporting research and development work in Universities. Even lots of ancilliary units work as satellites of NASA making use of outputs from the research work conducted at NASA and other national laboratories to create commercialy feasible products. American companies also are endowed with r&d facilities where a budding engineer can find solace in work.

I believe this American model need be adopted in in India for graduating Electronics engineers to find the right jobs when they graduate and further the Electronics industries in India.

I strongly agree with Idea 1,2 and 3 that can contribute immensely in creating high growth Electronic Industry but, successful Market place such as Europe, Japan,US were created by the integrated effort from their entrepreneurs, govt officials, policy makers all contributing to create conducive social, economical and commercial market conditions.

Simple example - SMPS - Power supply manufacturing. SMPS is most common element in all the electronic devices but, still locally in India it is restricted to contract manufacturing or design for the overseas clients. In India, import duty, Sales tax on components are simply not conducive for businessmen to think of manufacturing it where as you look at US,Europe, Japan or developing countries like Taiwan or Indonesia or China it's local business carried out in backyard of small businessmen. ..

One may call the Govt to come forward ? But that may not help.

One may wonder why we are way behind in Hardwares and Electronics products. May be our business men / Corporate Houses :

--   This is labour intensive - did not want to help the un-skilled / skilled labours of their own country

--   Had no idea about the market potential

--   Had no idea about profit ( where goes my profit ..  be quick .. mentality )

--   Had no Know-how

--   In Hardwares, some items are 'hazardous' - imports are required

Barring some like Wipro, HCL etc. computer hardwares are required to be imported in India - huge loss of Foreign Exchange. Actions are required - we may be equal in Mfg. - world should know.

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You r right Mam....besides that I would like to add another Idea... Electronics being a high-tech sector with rapid changes in technology, it requires sustained investment and a focused policy support to develop world-class capabilities. While venture funding is available in India, most of the funding is going to the middle and late stage companies. Lack of adequate early-stage funding is still an issue for product companies, especially since many first time Indian entrepreneurs are unlikely to have adequate financial resource of their own to sustain and fund their companies, even during the proof-of-concept stage. While the VC and angel funding mechanism falls into place, the government should immediately step in to provide R&D funding to create Indian products and IPR, especially since India's investment in R&D, at less than one percent of GDP, is amongst the lowest in the developed and emerging countries. There are lessons to be learned from the success of early-stage funding of R&D in other countries. In particular, the funding model used in Israel by the Office of Chief Scientist (OCS) has played a very vital role in Israel's emergence as a global leader in electronics and security products.