India is advanced than China in tech: Pilot

BANGALORE, INDIA: If Sachin Pilot, minister of State for Communications and IT, is to be believed the electronics industry in India will be $400 billion by 2020.

That is no hollow vision as he says the government would flexibly dole out help to ensure that. And he sounded confident when he said in 8 years, over 165 million households will have a high disposable income, which would drive Indian economy to $2 trillion.

Speaking at ISA Vision Summit-2012, themed 'Growth drivers for emerging markets: semiconductor and electronics systems', he had an advice for the design industry. "Industry is not about a vendor or policy making, but it is about collaboration and delivery. Indian design market needs to focus more on manufacturing. We have better technology and market than Korea, China and with proper focus on design and manufacturing, we can make better growth.”

He also launched the ISA Member Directory 2012.

He emphasized, “India as a country needs to have much more space and capacity to hold the data and we need to improve on it.”

Pilot reiterated, “Before the end of this year, Government will take some crucial decisions in the electronics sector. However, while it is important to have policies, investment and technology, it is also the responsibility of individual companies and state governments to partner and deliver on specific projects. There would be all possible help from central Government in manufacturing, especially the small and medium enterprises that really is the horse that would pull the wagon.”

On a more positive note, R Chandrashekar, secretary of depatment of IT and Telecom, spoke on the five major interventions in the industry taskforce to address the issues pertaining to the Indian design industry-- Establishment of Fab in India, market access, special incentives scheme for industry, setting up of electronics development fund for research and National Electronics Mission to promote manufacturing and system.

He said, “Indian design industry could get better through collaboration with other countries and IT companies, which would help in getting better opportunities. We have heard from others about the Korean way and Chinese way of innovation and development, here in India, it's going to be the Indian way, be it development, design or innovation.”

Speaking about the future of Indian design industy, B Venkataramana, executive director, VMC Systems Ltd, said, “the future of design industry lies in innovation. India has set a great example through the launch of Aakash tablet, which itself is a challenge delivered from India.”

He listed some suggestions for growth of the Indian design industry: improve supply chain management, create a pool of educated individuals, urge Indian companies to build scale for slated and unslated customer needs and lastly, to scale the market in ESDM market.

The first day's sessions of the Summit dealt with topics relevant to growth of the semiconductor industry, energy efficiency in electronics and state level initiatives on ESDM industry.

But above all, the underlying tone of every speech was that India has the opportunity to lead the world and innovation and entrepreneurship are the drivers of growth.