Applications of 27 computer hardware companies for manufacturing and assembling components in India have been approved under the production-linked incentive scheme, electronics and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Saturday, as a part of the government’s efforts to transform the country into a manufacturing hub.
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“23 out of 27 approved applicants are ready to start manufacturing on day zero,” Vaishnaw said. “Four companies will start their production within the next 90 days.”
The scheme, approved by the Union cabinet in May with a budgetary outlay of ₹17,000 crore, covers laptops, tablets, all-in-one PCs, servers and ultra small form factor devices.
Companies including Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Benq, ViewSonic and Foxconn will now manufacture components in India under the scheme. The approved firms include, Rising Stars Hi-Tech (Foxconn), HP, Hangsine Technosoft (HP), Flextronics Technologies (HP), Padget Electronics (Lenovo), Sojo Manufacturing Services (Lava), Bhagwati Products, Smile Electronics and Plumage Solutions (Acer), Genus Electrotech (Benq, ViewSonic), Sahasra Electronics (Thomson), VVDN Technologies, Optiemus (Asus), ITI and Sancraft, amongst others.
The manufacturing activities are expected to provide employment for about two lakh people, out of which 50,000 will be directly employed, Vaishnaw said. The investments by these 27 companies are valued at an additional ₹3,000 crore ($360 million), and the additional production value would be about ₹3.5 lakh crore, he said.
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“Many of the component sub-assemblies are the ones which are coming in first. Main level components are coming in parallel. It’s a very natural pull happening here,” the minister said. “There are very good design capabilities in the country, so large part of design work is happening in India and that is also a big value addition.”
Manufacturing in India was no longer just about low-cost production, but quality production with original intellectual property rights, Vaishnaw had said during the Indian Mobile Congress in October.
Without naming Apple, Vaishnaw said on Saturday that the company will also manufacture its laptops and computers in India.
In response to a question about how a few large players are not a part of the PLI scheme, a thinly veiled reference to Apple, Vaishnaw said, “When mobile phone manufacturing was being discussed, people used to ask me ‘When will Google come?’ Google has come. So your question of the company, which you have not named and which I am not naming, will also come. We are also evaluating and people are making their plans. So it is just a question of time. We don’t want to take any names because these are all large, listed companies having their SEC and compliance requirements. But you have understood.”
“The entire ecosystem will be built up. I’m sure this will be successful and there won’t be a need for PLI 3.0 especially when manufacturing of semiconductors also happens in India,” Colonel Suhail Zaidi (retd), the director general of Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), told HT.
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He reiterated Vaishnaw’s statement about the importance of design to the manufacturing process.
“For instance, a large part of Intel’s research and development happens in India,” he said.
