37 mobile manufacturing plants set up in last 1 year: Ravi Shankar Prasad

India has attracted investment from 37 mobile manufacturing companies in last one year that have generated 40,000 direct jobs and 1.25 lakh indirect employment, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Saturday.

"We decided to make India a big hub of electronics manufacturing. In the last one year, 37 new mobile manufacturing units have come," Prasad said after inaugurating government-funded 'Electropreneur Park'.

He said that 11 crore mobile phones have been made in the country in last one year compared to 6 crore earlier.

"We have given jobs to forty-thousand people and 1.25 lakh indirect jobs," Prasad said.

Chinese companies like Gionee and Xiaomi are making their handsets at Foxconn plant in Andhra Pradesh. Domestic companies such as Karbonn, Lava, Micromax, Intex, Jivi, iTel, and MTech too have set up their manufacturing plants in the country.

According to industry sources, Chinese company LeEco will start mobile manufacturing unit on Tuesday.

Prasad said that besides manufacturing electronics product in India, product designing is also important.

He said that government has provided Rs 10,000 crore under Electronics Development Fund to support new entrepreneurs in the field of electronics.

The Electropreneur Park (EP), which was inaugurated today in South Campus of Delhi University, is an incubation centre set up with government funds of around Rs 21 crore to support incubation of up to 50 companies.

Set-up in collaboration with academia and industry represented by Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Association, the Park will focus on creation of intellectual property rights and product development to increase domestic manufacturing of electronics items.

"India imports electronic goods of over Rs 3 lakh crore. By 2020 government aims to bring down import to zero. The Electropreneur Park started today is a step in that direction," Minister of State for IT and Law P P Choudhary said.

Ministry of Electronics and IT has selected six start-up firms that will develop products at this incubation centre.

"6 out of 176 start-ups have been selected which means they have capability of developing good quality products and selection of six more are in pipeline," MEITY Additional Secretary Ajay Kumar said.