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With the government pushing local manufacturing with initiatives like ‘Make in India’, smart cities and ‘Digital India’, the industry expects the country to reduce its dependence on electronics imports by almost 15 percentage points to around 50 per cent by fiscal 2016-17.
In 2014-15, electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM) market in India was estimated to be around $90 billion of which around 65-70 per cent of the demand was met through imports.
“By 2016, we expect to bring it (exports) down to 50 per cent,” said Ashok Chandak, chairman of industry body India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA). “This is an achievable goal.”
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Presently, there are around 250 companies working in the electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM) in India almost 40 per cent of which are global companies. The sector employs around 2 million employees. The industry body expects that over the next five years, the sector would create around 27 million job opportunities and by that time the country is expected to be self-reliant in electronics goods demand.
“With aggressive engagement from government, industry bodies and corporates, we are confident the ESDM environment will soon witness manufacturing to gather pace. The involvement of state governments has provided the required momentum with special manufacturing zones for electronics manufacturing,” said M N Vidyashankar, president of IESA.
Demand from key segments and Production ramp-ups are expected to create an additional investment of $15 billion in the sector with spin-offs. The industry also expects that with the focus on domestic manufacturing and demand from key sectors will create new avenues for the sector and boost the market to become a whopping $400 billion by 2025. For examples, even in mission critical segments like space research, the requirement of electronics and semiconductor are mostly met through imports which the Indian space research organization (ISRO) is now looking at indigenizing.
“ISRO significantly indigenized satellite missions, including the launch vehicles, satellites and the networks. Today, we have set an example of low cost space missions with a very high degree of success. However, in the electronics and semiconductors, India needs to indigenize on a higher scale. The onus is on the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Industry to fulfill this gap,” said former ISRO chairman Dr. K Radhakrishnan.
He said most of the important components in ISRO-made launch vehicles or satellites are electronics which are mostly being imported at the moment. “In PSLV, the important component is 10 per cent while in the GSLV, it is 20 per cent and in satellites, it is as high as 35 per cent. There is a lot of scope for the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Industry to contribute to the space programme in the long run,” he added.
As a part of the ‘Digital India’ programme, the government has recently proposed to set up an Electronic Development Fund (EDF). Meanwhile, the Software Technology Park of India (STPI) is also promoting entrepreneurship in the electronics space by through incubators.
"We are also preparing to set up an electronic system incubator in association with the Delhi University and IESA in New Delhi. This incubator which is known as Electropreneur Park will support entrepreneurs from making products till marketing them,” said Omkar Rai, Director General, STPI, Govt. of India
