‘Greater need to bring in more hardware units’

Our Bureau

Hyderabad, Aug 24: INDIA may miss the ‘hardware bus’ too if it does not create a conducive atmosphere to bring in more hardware units. The country cannot take-off without the penetration of PCs, digital and hardware components, Tata Consultancy Services vice-chairman FC Kohli said.

Making a key-note address at the two-day seminar on ‘Advantage-e-Hardware’ here on Friday, Mr Kohli said that India should invite global majors to put up manufacturing plants in the country to manufacture 1 million units a year to start with.

“Only the multinationals have the capacity and technology to put up the plants,” he said.

In order to make it reality, India should create a conducive climate, Mr Kohli pointed out. India needs to do something to develop infrastructure. The country also needs to provide level-playing field, to fight the grey market, to bring down duties and to market our country effectively, he said.

Digital components are another area to be encouraged. In the fabrication side, a silicon foundry should also be established.”

“We should enlarge the focus on the hardware industry, he said. There are is an urgent need to produce more microelectronic engineers. All the STPI parks in India should be converted into technology parks to enable them to accommodate hardware units in it,” he said. HP India Limited president Arun Thiagarajan, in his address said that the market has to grow fast, increase its focus on R&D efforts, make PC’s more affordable and create manufacturing climate for domestic industries. These were imperative for the growth of hardware sector.