Technology company Qualcomm believes that the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme introduced by the government of India earlier this year, is well timed and should put telecom, components and tech manufacturing ecosystems in a great position for the future. The government has pushed the PLI scheme in multiple phases over the past few months, to include sectors including smartphone manufacturing, electronics and technology products, white goods such as ACs and TVs as well as drugs, automobiles and components as well as textile, to name a few. This comes at a time when there is a big push from the Government as well towards Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat.
It is expected that the PLI scheme will boost manufacturing in India, providing impetus to the make in India mission as well as put India in a good position with exports. “The strategic timing of the PLI scheme has placed India in a great position for the future,” says Rajen Vagadia, VP and President, Qualcomm India and SAARC, to PTI. “The production linked incentive scheme by the government is a big catalyst as it will help global companies move their manufacturing and large parts of their supply chain to India and local companies to serve not just India but also export their products,” he adds.
Last month, the PLI scheme for the electronics and technology products was announced with an approved outlay of Rs 5000 crore for a five-year period. The total financial outlay for the newly added categories, that include pharmaceuticals and drugs, automobiles and auto components, white goods such as ACs and TVs as well as textile products, is Rs 1,45,980 crore. This is part of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat mission and push for Make in India to evolve India into a manufacturing and export hub.
The electronics and technology products category include semiconductor fabrication, display fabrication, servers, computer hardware, Internet of Things devices as well as laptops and notebooks. The PLI scheme for electronics and technology products will be implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. India is expected to have a $1 trillion digital economy by 2025, the government says. The push for data localization, Internet of Things market in India, as well as the Smart City and Digital India initiatives are expected to increase the demand for electronic products. “The Indian government's decision to introduce PLI for laptops is timely and in the right direction. We are confident that it will encourage local manufacturing and further bolster the local PC market, which is already seeing a positive momentum under the current work and learn from home scenarios,” said Rahul Agarwal, CEO and MD, Lenovo India, in a statement shared with News18 at the time.
Before that, the Government of India had approved applications of 10 smartphone manufacturers and 10 electronics manufacturers as part of the PLI scheme to incentivize smartphone production in India. These include Samsung Mobile, and Apple's suppliers Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron as well as domestic manufacturers including Lava, Micromax (Bhagwati), Padget Electronics, UTL Neolyncs, and Optiemus Electronics. The smartphone manufacturing PLI, which is implemented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has an outlay of Rs 40,951 crore for the next few years.