Digital India : Growth in Mobile and Electronics Manufacturing

Year Achievements in 2018 under Digital India

The Digital India Programme of the Government aims to transform India into a knowledge-based economy and digitally empowered society by ensuring digital access, digital inclusion, digital empowerment and bridging the digital divide. Under Digital India Programme MeitY has effectively utilised Digital technologies to transform the lives of people while ensuring digital inclusion of all the segments. The Government is committed to provide governance and services to our citizens in an affordable and efficient manner within the shortest span of time.

• • Growth in Mobile Phone Manufacturing: There has been almost 29% rise on the production of mobile phones to reach 22.5 crore units vis-s-vis 17.5 crore units last year. It is estimated that about 6.7 lakh persons are employed (directly and indirectly) by the units manufacturing mobile phones and parts/ components thereof.
    • Jump of 29% in terms of units made. Manufacturing of mobile phones has reached 22.5 crore units in 2017-18 from 17.5 crore in 2016-17.
    • About 268 unique no. of units are manufacturing cellular mobile phones and parts/ components thereof in the country.
    • About 6.7 lakh persons are employed (directly and indirectly) by the units manufacturing mobile phones and parts/ components thereof.
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• • Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (MSIPS): To offset disability and attract investments in Electronic manufacturing, Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme  provides 20-25% subsidy for investments in capital expenditure for setting up of new electronic manufacturing facility or expansion of the existing electronic manufacturing facility. The incentives are available for 44 categories of electronic products and product components. As on November 2018, 272 active applications have been received with a total investment outlay of Rs 68, 820 crore. Out of these, 190 applications have been approved so far with a total proposed investment of Rs 41,341 crore. Out of these 144 units, 127 units have commenced production. These 127 units have generated total employment (direct and indirect) of 64,000 and paid taxes amounting to Rs 8,211 crore to the government. There are 2 mega projects with proposed investments of over 1billion USD amounting to Rs 37,576 crore. These mega-projects are under initial stage of appraisal. So far, Rs 330 crore of incentives have been disbursed to 38 applicants and 33 claims, claiming incentives of Rs 331 crore are under process.

• • Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC) scheme: EMC provides support for creation of world-class infrastructure for attracting investments in the Electronics Systems Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) Sector. Under the scheme, final approval  has been accorded to Twenty (20) applications for setting up Greenfield Electronics Manufacturing Cluster and three (3) applications for setting up of Common Facility Centre in Brownfield Cluster  over an area of 3,565 acres with project cost of Rs 3,898 crore in fifteen (15) states across the country. These EMCs are projected to attract an investment of Rs 54,800 crore and are expected to generate approx. 6.43 lakh employment opportunities. As of now, 121 units have booked land for setting up of their manufacturing facilities within these EMCs. 16 units have started commercial production with investment of  Rs 4,366 crore providing employment to 8,221 persons.
  • Electronics Development Fund: Creating a vibrant ecosystem of innovation, Research and Development (R&D) with active industry involvement is essential for a thriving electronics industry. It is with this objective that an Electronics Development Fund (EDF) is set up as a “Fund of Funds” to participate in professionally managed “Daughter Funds” which in turn will provide risk capital to companies developing new technologies in the area of Electronics, Nano-electronics and Information Technology (IT). Canbank Venture Capital Funds Ltd. (CVCFL), a 100% subsidiary of Canara Bank, is the Investment Manager and MeitY is the anchor investor of EDF. As at the end of second quarter of FY 2018-19, EDF has invested Rs 53.52 crore in six Daughter Funds, which in turn have made investments of Rs 177.37 crore in 47 Ventures/ Startups. Total Employment in supported Startups was around 4,200.
  • Development and Implementation of Indian Conditional Access System (iCAS): Keeping in view the huge indigenous requirement of the broadcasting sector, Conditional Access System, entitled iCAS has been developed to promote indigenous manufacturing of Set Top Boxes (STBs). Over 14,00,000 STBs with iCAS have been deployed  with more than 150 operators. Doordarshan is leveraging the developed technology to upgrade its Dish DTH platform.
  • Rationalisation of tariff structure: Tariff Structure has been rationalized to promote indigenous manufacturing of electronic goods, including, inter-alia, Cellular Mobile Handsets, Televisions, Electronic Components, Set Top Boxes, LED Products, Medical Electronics, Microwave Ovens, etc. For promoting indigenous manufacturing of Cellular Mobile Handsets and sub-assemblies/ components/ accessories thereof, a Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) is under implementation.

As a result, the production of LCD/ LED TVs has gone up from 1.5 crore units in 2016-17 to 1.6 crore units in 2017-18. The production value of Light Emitting Diode (LED) Products has gone up from Rs 7,134 crore in 2016-17 to  Rs 9,630 crore in 2017-18.

• • Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order 2017: The Government has issued Public Procurement (Preference to Make in India) Order 2017 to encourage ‘Make in India’ and to promote manufacturing and production of goods and services in India with a view to enhancing income and employment. 

In furtherance of the aforesaid Order MeitY has notified for 11 Electronic Products viz., Desktop PCs, Laptop PCs, Tablet PCs, Dot Matrix Printers, Contact and Contactless Smart Cards, LED Products, Biometric Access Control/ Authentication Devices, Biometric Finger Print Sensors, Biometric Iris Sensors, Servers, and Cellular Mobile Phones vide Notification No. 33(1)/2017-IPHW dated 14.09.2017 and Notification No. 33(5)/2017-IPHW dated 01.08.2018, respectively. The Electronic Product Notifications will help stimulate the flow of capital and technology, create employment opportunities, promote higher value addition in the electronic products manufactured in the country and reduce dependence on imports.

• • Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirements for Compulsory Registration) Order, 2012: Keeping in view the safety of Indian consumers and to curb the inflow of substandard electronic products, the “Electronics and Information Technology Goods (Requirements for Compulsory Registration) Order, 2012” was notified on 3^rd October, 2012 under the provision of Compulsory Registration Scheme of BIS Act, 1986. This Order had come into effect from 3^rd July, 2013. So far, 44 products categories have been added to the schedule of the Order and the Order has come into effect for all the notified products/ standards.

The Indian Language support for Mobile Phones as per IS 16333 (Part 3) has been added to the schedule of this Order on 24^th October, 2016. The standard provides for inputting of text in English, Hindi and at least one additional Indian official language along with facility of readability in the phones for all 22 Indian official languages and script supporting these languages. The Order has come into effect from 1^st May, 2018.

The Compulsory Registration Scheme has resulted in high compliance of notified electronic goods to Indian safety standards and more than 15,000 registrations have been granted by BIS to manufacturing units covering approximately 75,000 products models/ series.

7. To promote the use of electronics in healthcare, agriculture, energy and environment, transportation, Safety and security, communication and computing, R&D projects have been taken up in the sector of Medical Electronics and Health Informatics (ME&HI), Electronics System Design and Application (ESDA), Electronics Material and Component Development (EMCD), Microelectronics Development, Nanotechnology with main focus on Nanoelectronics and Computer Security. Followings are the achievements during the year 2018 –
   • Design and development of 64-bit Microprocessor by IIT Madras and 32-bit Microprocessor by IIT Bombay designed using Open Source Instruction Set Architectures (ISA) fabricated successfully at 180nm technology node of SCL Mohali.
   • Four numbers of 6 MV LINAC developed for the treatment of cancer. Three of them have been deployed at Indian Institute of Head and Neck Oncology, Indore, Amravati Cancer Foundation, Amravati and BKL Walawalkar Hospital, Chiplun.  On an average 30 patients are being treated per day on these machines. Technology has been transferred to industry.
   • Centre of Excellence on Tactile Graphics has been established at IIT Delhi for development of tactile diagrams for Divyang. Tactile diagrams created for text books i.e. Science & Math books for Grades 6 to 10, India map book etc. for visually impaired children. A start-up company under the project “Centre of excellence in tactile graphics” has been incubated for production of tactile diagrams.       
   • Various devices developed/are being developed under the Centres of Excellence in Nanoelectronics setup.
   • An Aadhaar enabled cloud based Personal Health Record Management System (PHRMS) application has been designed to store Personal Health record of Individuals. System is deployed on National Health Portal server.

• • Specialized Manpower Generation –
    • An umbrella Programme “Special Manpower Development Programme in Chips to System Design (SMDP-C2SD)” has been initiated with the aim to generate specialized manpower in the area of VLSI design and to develop System-on-Chip/ System. 28,000 numbers of specialised manpower generated in last 3 years and 15 projects taken up for the development of 70 Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and 30 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based board level design.  State-of-the-art VLSI designs labs setup at 60 institutes. About 30 Chips fabricated at SCL Mohali & other foundries.
    • To train specialised research manpower in the area of Nanoelectronics using the R&D facility established at IISc, Bangalore and IIT Bombay, a joint program “Indian Nanoelectronics Users Program (INUP)” has been started and utilised by the researchers across the country for proof of concept of their ideas. There are around 410 publications and 30 patents under this program.

• • To secure the cyber space following key actions have been initiated –
    • Cyber Swachhta Kendra (Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis Centre) has been launched by the Government in February, 2017 for detection of systems infected by malware/ botnets in the country and to notify, enable cleaning and securing systems of end users to prevent further malware infections by providing free bot removal tool via web portal.
    • Free bot removal tool downloaded in the year 2017 are 4,78,508. The number of Free bot removal tool downloaded in the year 2018 are 8,18,910.
    • Government has initiated setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats and enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities. Phase-I of NCCC has been made operational.

8. All this ensures that with the aim of Minimum Government Maximum Governance, ease of living of the citizens is at the core of Digital India. This has laid a robust foundation for India to become one of the leaders in digital transformation.