BY MAHESH LINGAREDDY
Founder and CEO, Soft Machines
The buzzword in Indian corporate circles these days is ‘Make in India’, which is receiving a tremendous boost from the Narendra Modi-led NDA government. While much of the focus is on how India can emerge as a hub of manufacturing, there is no discussion about developing products and global brands. Productcentric innovation, development and sales is the key for creating higher value and driving demand for healthy manufacturing.
Over the last 15-20 years, while India has been focused on services, China has wisely extended its focus to products from manufacturing. As a result, China today is not only the manufacturing behemoth, but home for many fast-growing global brands like Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, Kingsoft, Alibaba and Baidu spanning hardware, software and e-commerce. The demand for manufacturing is now driven by global companies such as Apple as well as local companies such as Xiaomi. India, on the other hand, lags both in manufacturing and product companies, but leads in services through the likes of Infosys, TCS, etc.
As such, now ‘Make in India’ shouldn’t be just about manufacturing but also be about designing, developing and selling various hardware and software products right here in India, for India and the world. In addition to manufacturing, India should emphasize on building products and global brands through component, device, system and software-level innovations.
So where exactly do we stand in terms of innovation and design even for local markets? Take the cheaper smart phones that have flooded the Indian market, for example. Many of the top Indian brands are simply importing Chinese-made handsets and labelling them with their logo and retailing them as Indian products. It may fetch them dividends in the beginning, but in the long run, that strategy will definitely not work. We are already witnessing the influx of major Chinese branded smartphones in India.
For thousands of years, India was known for its great inventions and discoveries in the areas of agriculture, mathematics, sciences, medicine, infrastructure, transportation and military. Somehow, India lost its way in the last few centuries. It is time for India to wake up and innovate once again on a global scale. India is home to millions of brilliant minds, who contribute their innovations to create value for many multinational companies from IBM to Intel to Microsoft to Google to Facebook. It is high time India created an IBM or Intel or Microsoft or Google or Boeing of its own, leveraging its huge talent and market. Of course, it is easier said than done. There are challenges galore.
But I am an optimist and opportunist. There are definitely some encouraging trends. We have recently seen some great success stories with companies like Flipkart and Snapdeal. Global PE firms and early stage investors are eyeing potential Indian firms in e-retail, app-based businesses, e-commerce and online ventures. It means the world is looking at India as the next big opportunity for growth, particularly in technology-related business. India must take advantage of this and duplicate its e-commerce success across all product segments from hardware to software to social media to apps.
Finally, India must leverage the power of crowd innovation. We have had a huge opportunity to ride the momentum of Internet of Things (IoT) and Smarter Planet enabled smart devices, big data systems, sensor networks and renewable energy. There are going to be huge opportunities, as all these smart devices talk to each other (M2M) and become more autonomous with integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics. This gives a huge opportunity to start-ups to innovate and disrupt the market with a variety of products, platforms, and services.
Feedback: mahesh.lingareddy@softmachines.com
