Information Technology (IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday said 95 mobile manufacturing companies have set up their plants in the country.
"Today 95 mobile manufacturing factories have come up in India and India is becoming a big hub of electronics and mobile manufacturing. Of these, 32 units have come up in Noida and Greater Noida," Prasad said at the Capital Foundation Annual Lecture here.
"Every day we are adding 3-4 start-ups. They are IITians, they left their jobs in America and have come back to India," he said.
"In Silicon Valley (US), 51 per cent of new inventions are IT-based and 14 per cent of those are created by Indian minds there. That is how India is emerging," he added.
Last week, Lenovo Group announced that it doubled its manufacturing capacity in India to 12 million units a year for both Lenovo and Motorola brands. India is one of its top three markets by revenue, and Lenovo is aggressively expanding itself to regain its position in the top three smartphone players in the market.
Apple has been in talks with the government since May 2016 to set up a manufacturing plant in India and make it an export base. In the first phase of this plan, Apple’s contract manufacturer Wistron Corp set up an assembly plant in Bengaluru to assemble iPhone SE. However, the second phase of Apple’s unit in India will depend on how well the iPhone SE does, which isn’t showing promising results at present.
Samsung also announced plans of doubling its production capacity for mobile phones and fridges in India to reduce its dependence on Vietnam and shift focus to India. It announced that it will be investing $764 million over three years to add 35 acres more to its current site in the outskirts of Delhi.
Another fast growing brand Xiaomi, which has seen massive adoption in India also announced its second manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh in partnership with Foxconn. After the new facility is set up, more than 95% of Xiaomi’s smartphones sold in India will be made in the country.
The minister also said the government plans to make 6 crore families in the country digital-literate as part of the Digital India plan.
Prasad, who is also Law Minister, also lauded the Supreme Court for leveraging digital technology in expediting judicial processes.
"We have created digital data grid. Today we have got about six crore orders of judgements on the digital data grid and about 4 crore of pending cases are also there. At a click of the button, you can monitor it, how many of them have been disposed," he said.