India got 50 new mobile phone factories in last 10 months: DeitY

Employment created for 20,000 people; country can now make 9 mn phones a month

As many as 50 new mobile phone factories were set up in the country during the past 10 months, creating employment for 20,000 people. The installed capacity for mobile phone manufacturing in India is now nine million units per month, with growth predominantly coming from increasing demand for smartphones.

"There were 159 electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) production units established in India last year and the technology sector is expected to be $1 Tn opportunity in India in the next 5-7 years," said Ajay Kumar, additional secretary of the department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) here in Bengaluru.

Out of the $1 trillion opportunity for India, hardware manufacturing is estimated to grow into a $400 billion industry, software services a $250 billion space and telecom and IoT making up the other $250 billion, within the next five to seven years.

Smartphone sales in India during 2015 for the first time crossed the 100 million units mark, bringing the country closer to overtaking the US as the second largest smartphone market in the world. Given the high demand and increased import duties on electronics, vendors are increasingly opting for local assembly of devices.

Global electronics giants such as Samsung, LG and Foxconn have all setup factories in India, with proposed investments in local electronics manufacturing having grown six-fold to Rs 1.14 lakh crores ($16.8 billion) in the last 20 months, according to the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA).

"Investment in the electronics manufacturing sector has jumped over six-fold to reach Rs 1.14 lakh crore in 2015, and this re-established the need for initiating dialogues to seize the$400B 'Make in India' opportunity," said M. N. Vidyashankar, President of the IESA. "ESDM startups are key to India's $400B 'Make in India' opportunity."

"There is a huge opportunity for innovation with Local languages. We cannot scale any technology products and solutions if the devices and services are not talking to 1.25 Bn people in their local languages. Govt. has released a draft policy for supporting local languages and making machine-translation into local languages a reality in India," Kumar said.