Varun Alagh, co-founder and CEO of Honasa Consumer, which owns Mamaearth, pushed for the need of quality of education and reskilling owing to impact of AI in the next few years.
Endorsing wholeheartedly the government’s initiatives as a facilitator and policy-maker in the tech space, startup founders and CEOs have urged for maintaining the continuity once the new regime is in place next month. Focusing on making the country a product nation, increasing R&D spend, and building the AI infrastructure, figure topped on their wish list in the agenda for the next five years.
The agenda was articulated by marquee founders like Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal, Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh, Urban Company’s Abhiraj Bahl, EaseMyTrip’s Rikant Pittie, MapMyIndia’s Rohan Verma, on Monday evening at a dinner pe charcha organised by minister of state for IT and electronics, Rajeev Chandrasekhar and petroleum and natural gas minister, Hardeep Singh Puri.
Peak XV Partners managing director Rajan Anandan, Dixon Technologies chairman Sunil Vacchani, and Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA), also echoed the same views.
“It’s absolutely fantastic we have a Rs 1 trillion project to actually promote investments in R&D in sectors like deeptech, but the reality is (India’s R&D investment is) 0.7% of $3.9 trillion (GDP), which comes to $45 billion,” Anandan said at the event.
“What we need by 2030 is 10x that ($45 billion) amount,” he added. Comparatively, China spends 2.5% of its GDP in R&D and that of the US is 3.5%.
Zomato’s CEO Deepinder Goyal said, “over the past 16 years, especially 7-10 years, the government has kept itself out of the way of startups… hope it continues”. “In the last 10 years, what this government has done has completely transformed geospatial space…Even as ‘East India Company’ may not be here physically but digital East India Company is still here,” said Rohan Verma, CEO of MapMyIndia.
Verma added that the government should enable Indian companies in the next five years. His comments with reference to digital East India Company came in reference to Google, which owing to its dominance in Android market and Play Store is allegedly hurting the startups.
Varun Alagh, co-founder and CEO of Honasa Consumer, which owns Mamaearth, pushed for the need of quality of education and reskilling owing to impact of AI in the next few years.
“While we focus on capturing the global market of AI, we must also be cognisant that the first impact AI is going to have will be on reducing back office jobs, which require manual discipline,” Alagh said, adding that the government should continue its efforts to generate more jobs.
Electronics contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies called for creation of a strong component ecosystem in the country after the success of smartphone production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.
“One of the priorities, definitely should be the creation of a robust and strong component ecosystem, maybe a PLI or combined SPECS (Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors) scheme for the component ecosystem,” said Sunil Vacchani, chairman of Dixon Technologies.
The India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) wants the new government to focus on controlling the oversight by enforcement agencies, reducing cost of capital for companies through certain relaxations, and create Indian champions in the sector.
“We have not been able to rein in our enforcement agencies, whether it is GST or DRI (Directorate of Revenue Intelligence) or enforcement directorate. That is hurting our enthusiasm, it is hurting our profession. That is something which we need to fix very quickly,” said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of ICEA.
Industry association MAIT in its representation to the electronics and IT ministry suggested launch of at least two new PLI schemes – one for components and another for hearables/wearables.
These schemes will help in developing manufacturing competency and encourage domestic champions in segments such as components and sub-assemblies to enable exports, large scale capacity for production, attract opportunities for new investments and provide an impetus to domestic value addition, the association said.
“At MAIT, we believe that for India to seamlessly integrate into global supply chains, regulatory customization that encourage global leaders to invest and allow local companies to participate are essential,” said Rajkumar Rishi, president of MAIT.
The government is currently working on the framework of new components incentive scheme.