October 28, 2021

Cultivate the culture of manufacturing in India – High time!

Why do apple-like companies go to China for manufacturing? – It is for “skill” and “quality”. Yes, I like it or not should I accept it. Does China build it overnight? Obviously, NO – Nothing will happen overnight, there is a decades-of-effort involved. Here are some of the views which I would like to bring it up!

Many found India more as a consumer country than a producer. Many foreign companies come to India to establish businesses and are inclined towards sales or skill and get services done, very less for produce products. So, from inside and outside – India is found more as a consumer country than a producer because its population is still struggling to compete in the global market! – but why? Because(in my opinion) we never focussed and our focus has got distracted many years ago! We were super busy with sharing lands, dividing borders with neighbourhoods, and establishing this democratic country after India-independence. And the leadership during the fourth plan and fifth plan want their hair-DIY be in black and cloths in rainbow colors on TVs but they want it with borrowed technology don’t want to inhouse technology. Yes, quite understandable because we were under slavery. It seems like the English left seven decades back but our minds are stuck!

The skill !

I am not talking about urban India and English-educated kids! I am talking people who live in remote villages where there is no school or electricity are exhibiting exceptional skill in making products. India is one and only country or one of those countries where skills are identified uniquely and organised systematically based on the skills that they are good at, and the profession they are into! The best example is material crafts. Typical no-school-went village women make a WOODEN carve or BEEDI or CLAY a pot, you can’t even diversify them. No question about lack of skill, all it needs is a retrieve, nurture, and cultivate the skill.

• It is high time to cultivate the culture of Research, Design, Develop and Manufacturing in India.
• The “Semiconductor Design” and “IoT technology” are distinct in terms and each has its own business impact in the market! They seem to be technically connected but they can evolve and impact the market in different ways.
• At one time, there was a notion that the fabless-Semicon industry was at its saturation level and there were not many investments, maybe due to the high magnitude of investment, long wait times for ROIs, uncertainty to make a success story out of fabless ideas.
• Having said this, we also witnessed decent mergers and acquisitions(maybe for different reasons). Also, the boom of e-commerce and web-based applications impacted investors a bit too! and investors are also a bit inclined towards web-based software solutions.

But today the devices are no longer standalone, unlike classic device every device is a connected device, every device wants to be an intelligent device & always ON!! And these days there is an opinion shift with –

“ML and AI engines(IPs) on the edge” maybe going to change the industry and economy.
Connectivity – edge processing demands a high connectivity bandwidth and this game may revolve around 5G.
Power consumption is one of the biggest problems in this landscape and low power devices are in high demand.
Edge devices with “high processing power with ML and AI capabilities”, “high-speed connectivity” and “lower power consumption could be key factors to be considered.
(4) I believe, semiconductor design companies having decades of experience and the new age companies who made successful products and learned from failures should come forward and can set guidelines for the upcoming semiconductor design startups in India and focus on skill development.