India pitching itself as trusted global supply-chain partner: Vaishnaw

The Union minister said cost alone no longer drives supply-chain decisions, with trust, cybersecurity and resilience becoming central to global technology partnerships

India is positioning itself as a trusted supply chain partner in manufacturing, design, and other capabilities the country is entering, Union Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.

 

“It is no longer just about cost. Trust and cybersecurity are becoming very important. Countries like India are placing themselves as a trusted partner for global value chains,” Vaishnaw said. He was speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum being held here in the city.

 

Tech sovereignty, Vaishnaw added, had to be looked at in a very complex and mature way wherein the country would have to think along the lines of “strategic dependencies and resilience” and the products for which India should depend on others.

  

“Technology is always a global value chain. We want to be deeply embedded in this value chain and be able to add value to those parts of the value chain where we play the best role,” Vaishnaw said.

 

One of the most critical challenges in building an end-to-end manufacturing supply chain is the shortage of materials for manufacturing products of all kinds, the union minister said.

 

India will, therefore, need to continuously evaluate its partners and work with like-minded countries to develop such technology stacks, Vaishnaw said.

 

Chuck Robbins, chair and chief executive officer of Cisco, who was on the same panel with Vaishnaw, said the success of the technology stacks offered by different companies and countries will depend entirely on the relationship between these firms and the geographies they operate in.

 

“I do not think most countries are under the pretence that they could do it all when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI). I think that it is very difficult because by the time you build a piece of technology that comes from our portfolio or someone else’s portfolio, it is probably obsolete,” Robbins added.