Change in mindset will help our economy grow and thrive
By Ajai Chowdhry
We have heard a lot about Aatmanirbharta and Make-in-India, and yet, we see Indians and the world readily buy Apple and Samsung made in India but think twice about Indian products designed and made in India.
Read More: UCO Bank fraud case: CBI conducts raids in 13 locations
The Europeans and the Japanese are known to buy their own products, before any other’s. So,what could be the reason why Indians don’t seem to have pride in made-in-India products?
Is it due to quality? That’s an unacceptable argument. We have made our foray to the moon, tickled interest in our unicorns, the world relies on our engineering and R&D talent, we are the world’s biggest vaccine producer, our digital public infrastructure is being studied globally. All this could not have happened were it not for our remarkable engineering quality.
Countries are looking to replicate our innovative strides in developing paperless, and cashless fintech systems. Our Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay are expanding their reach in the United Arab Emirates, Japan, the United States, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, France and Australia. To combat Covid, the first two breakthrough vaccines, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine (Covishield, manufactured under license by Serum Institute of India) and Covaxin (developed locally by Bharat Biotech), were made in India. While we took the risk of injecting made-in-India vaccines, why can’t we trust made-in-India products?
Read More: Chennai Floods: Schools Closed, Trains Cancelled; Milk & Drinking Water Shortage Adds to City’s Woes
Indian companies have cornered 30% of the global software services market. We are doing remote infrastructure management for Fortune 500 companies. For instance, HCL manages Nokia’s global infrastructure from India. Our Mahindra cars, Tata’s Harrier and Maruti’s Brezza, to name a few, are sold abroad.
As per the Nasscom-Zinnov report, India had 1,580 global capability centres (GCCs) or in-house technology and business process centres of global corporations, with 1.66 million employees as of 2022-23. These companies are in India to digitally transform their businesses, and create pathbreaking products and solutions for global enterprises. Nasscom expects 500 more GCCs to be added to this list. That’s so much to say about Indian engineering, quality and reliability.
We need to ensure that foreign products meet our certification standards. Just like the US FDA and EU’s CE, the BIS certification provides a guarantee of quality, safety, and reliability.
Pride is a theme I explore in my book Just Aspire too. Here I have mentioned HCL’s 2004 Mindia campaign, where we designed badges adorned with India’s tricolour, a mandatory emblem for all, myself included.
Read More: PM Modi To Inaugurate Uttarakhand Global Investors Summit 2023 On 8 December
To reduce our carbon footprint, and for our poor to enjoy the fruits of modern technologies, products must be affordable, repairable, upgradable and capable of being refurbished. I would quote Vijay Mahajan’s insights in The 86% Solution, that 86% of the global market resides in India, China, and Africa. We need to ensure that others do not overtake the larger share of this pie, and we can do so by promoting our brands and having pride in them.
