With US President-elect Donald Trump intending to impose substantially higher tariffs on Chinese goods, India should utilise this to its advantage by manufacturing electronics hardware products in the country and exporting these products to the US, said Ajai Chowdhry, co-founder of HCL.

Talking to businessline, Chowdhry, also the Chairman of the Mission Governing Board of the National Quantum Mission (NQM), emphasised the need for making India a hardware product nation, raising concerns that India no longer has any major electronic brands.

He informed that under the NQM all the four Section 8 companies are expected to come up in the next one week under the aegis of the country’s premier institutes to undertake various activities under the mission.

“Now Donald Trump is coming in as the US president. He is going to impose a 60% duty on all Chinese products. He is going to impose 20 per cent duty on all other imports. India is a very trusted source, the US trusts us. So, if we create products in India and export from India, we would have a 40 per cent advantage. So it opens up a huge market for Indian products. Can you imagine the benefit of designing and making in India? So this kind of thinking we should do in the country,” Chowdhry said.

According to him, presently under the production-linked incentives (PLI) scheme for hardware manufacturing a very low value addition work is happening in India. The country needs to create Indian brands for the world.

“Whatever manufacturing in the hardware space in India is happening is happening at 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 15 per cent value addition. We must move up now. The value addition should come from design. And if we design in India and create Indian brands, then we make products in India for India and then for the world, we will be much better off,” he said.

Noting that India till now has been totally service oriented, Chowdhry said it was very concerning that manufacturing hardware products were being neglected.

He said he started the EPIC Foundation with a single objective to make India a hardware product nation.

“So, to do that, first of all, what we did was to work with the government. We did two-three things with the government. So one of the things that we did was that we worked with the Consumer Affairs Ministry to say all electronic products in India should be repairable. All over the world there is a movement towards the right to repair. So we are deeply working on the right to repair with the Consumer Affairs Ministry,” Chowdhry said, adding the foundation submitted its report on semiconductor fabrication plants around two-and-half months ago to the government.

“We are setting up fabs in India. The chips are all designed and made in India, but made for global companies. We do nothing for India. So, in our report we have suggested the government to incentivise design of products and chips in India for Indian requirements. Government is the largest buyer. So if the government decides to give business to Indian companies, it would also increase value addition in India and make brands happen all over again,” he said.

On the National Quantum Mission, Chowdhry said each of the four independent Section 8 companies, in which the thematic parks will be housed, will have a board and a CEO.

“Most of the companies are ready to start. Their boards will have people from the private sector also. In the next one week all the four companies will come up,” he added.

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