Envisioning India as a global hub of Electronics Manufacturing

It is time to consider the Covid-19 pandemic as an opportunity for visualizing the prospective boom in the Electronics design and manufacturing sector. Schemes and programs like Make in India, Digital India has been significantly transformative and since the last 5 to 6 years, electronics production has produced a steep slope of nearly 23% in our country. The growth in mobile phone manufacturing has been remarkable with a production hike from 6Cr. Units in 2014 to 33Cr. units. These technological initiatives have a profound impact on people from every part of society and have made considerable contributions to the progress of society as a whole.

Atmanirbhar Bharat, the main aim of self-reliant India is to convert this crisis into an opportunity for us. During April 2020, the Ministry of Electronics & IT had notified 3 schemes under the National Policy on Electronics to push electronics manufacturing in India with a 48000-crore outlay. The most significant scheme out of these, the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) shall extend an incentive of 4 to 6% on incremental sales of electronic companies that manufacture mobile phones and other electronic components in India for a period of 5years subsequent to the base year 2019-20

This makes way for companies that manufacture mobile phones to sell one unit for Rs15000 or more to receive an incentive of up to 6% while in the same category Indian origin companies have an incentive of Rs200 crore reserved.

With a further thrust to India’s stellar progress in technology, over 22 companies including the leading South Korean mobile manufacturer Samsung and global electronic manufacturing firms Pegatron, Foxconn, and Wistron have expressed their interest to participate in the PLI scheme. The above 3 companies are contract manufacturers for Apple iPhones and this makes the scheme more effective for us as both Apple and Samsung together account for a whopping 60% of global sales revenue from mobile phones. Indian companies who have applied for the scheme include Lava, Dixon Technologies, Micromax and many others as well.

Further, how do we Indians get benefitted out of these??

The scheme is expected to generate approximately 3lakh direct employment opportunities in the next 5years along with the creation of additional indirect employment of nearly 3 times the direct employment. There shall be a steady increase in career opportunities for engineering graduates in the coming years. The demand for high-quality Electronic engineers will increase in several folds and becomes a lucrative career option in comparison with software engineers. The reason behind this positive change of wind is the growing nexus between the electronics industry, digital technology, and communication field.

With the rise in the Electronics industry with leading firms springing up to avail the PLI scheme, the profile of Electronics engineers will have a huge demand and this will create tremendous opportunities particularly for Electronics and Communication engineering aspirants. Hence the current National Policy on Electronics (NEP) 2019 endorse Electronics and Communication engineering as a promising growth-driven stream and with adequate knowledge in the stream coupled with specific skill set can make ECE graduates the most competent engineers and grapple the forthcoming technology progress envisioned under AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyan and other flagship programs like Digital India and Make in India.