Digital India Initiative

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India's top e-tailer Flipkart eyes groceries; renewed push in furniture
India's top e-commerce player Flipkart plans to move into the groceries space and make a renewed push in the online furniture business, as it expands its product portfolio and looks to outmaneuver global giant Amazon.com in a burgeoning Indian market.
Flipkart Chief Executive Binny Bansal said the home-grown e-commerce player plans to begin experimenting with grocery sales next year and scale up operations over a three year period.
“There's definitely room to build a profitable grocery business, but it's hard. That doesn't mean it's not possible, but it's hard,” Bansal told Reuters in an interview on Sunday.
Amazon has already began to pilot grocery sales in select Indian cities.
More and more people in India, a country of over 1.2 billion people, are logging on to the internet to buy everything ranging from clothes to smartphones, making its e-commerce market one of the world's fastest growing.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch sees the value of goods sold online in India jumping tenfold to $188 billion by 2025.
Bansal said fashion will remain Flipkart's best selling category for the next few years, but he sees online groceries as having the potential to grow as big as fashion and electronics in the next six to eight years.
Earlier in 2016, Flipkart-owned fashion portal Myntra bought rival Jabong for $70 million to create India's largest online fashion retailer.
Furniture potential
Bansal said Flipkart is also eyeing making deeper inroads in the online furniture space.
Indian websites such as Urban Ladder and Pepperfry have just begun to fuel the demand for online furniture sales in India, a country where many still prefer traditional carpenters and local stores.
Flipkart currently sells furniture but plans to relaunch the store in about three to four months and add more variety.
“You will see more furniture in three-four months,” he said.
“We're ramping up our selection and experience as well. We are basically building capabilities for furniture,” Bansal said, adding Flipkart aims to provide furniture assembly services that are key to making headway in this segment.
IPO plans
Flipkart would consider going public in two to four years, Bansal said, adding the company could consider listing in India or overseas.
He said Flipkart, which is backed by Tiger Global Management and Accel Partners among others, has cash reserves to last up to three years and that the company looks to raise money when the funds are available rather then when they are needed most.
“What that strategy means is that we are constantly talking to investors and partners who are interested in investing.” Reuters reported in September that Wal-Mart Stores was in talks to buy a minority stake in Flipkart.
 

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Flipkart to be reloaded with Indian goods
The move will help the ecommerce major not only to get favourable attention from a central government that supports local manufacturing but also to stand apart from American rival Amazon in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for online retail.
NEW DELHI: Homegrown online marketplace leader Flipkart is going to join the make-in-India bandwagon. Executive Chairman Sachin Bansal is building a team for the India-made private label initiative, which will be incubated under the Flipkart Group, according to three persons privy to the developments.
The move will help the ecommerce major not only to get favourable attention from a central government that supports local manufacturing but also to stand apart from American rival Amazon in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for online retail.
"It’s a big potential business," said one of the people aware of the matter. A second source confirmed the "nascent project" and said "the subsidies and tax benefits for make-in-India products and the favourable government attention make the opportunity exciting."
Goods ranging from electronics to apparel made by local manufacturers will be branded as private label products from Flipkart and sold on the online marketplace which currently hosts over one lakh merchants. The timelines for the project are yet to be fixed, the sources said. Bansal earlier incubated Flipkart's advertisements business, which is now a growing vertical for the ecommerce company.
A representative for Flipkart confirmed the make-in-India plan but declined to share details.
Typically, private label products — manufactured according to specific designs spelt out by a retailer— are seen as beneficial to ecommerce companies.
They offer higher margin as well as provide exclusivity. In segments like apparel, private labels offer margins of up to 50-60% for fashion portals like Myntra.
"The purpose of private label brands is two-fold: increase margins from sales by owning the full value chain and diversify revenue sources which better positions the company against competition," said Kartik Hosanagar, a professor at the Wharton Businss School in the United States.
"It’ll help increase government ties for sure. But at the end of the day, the question is whether the private labels will stick with the customer," he said.
PRIVATE LABEL EXPERIMENT
Flipkart too experimented with private labels in dominant categories like electronics with its own range of tablets and USBs under the Digiflip brand, which proved to be a short-lived initiative. This latest move by Bansal is different as it seeks to build a manufacturing base in India and not rely on sourcing goods from large manufacturing bases like China.
In June, the company said it was identifying top merchants who would also import products and offer them at the best price on its marketplace.
"One of the big things that comes to mind with private labels is margins," said Anil Kumar, chief executive of RedSeer Management Consulting, a retail consulting firm, adding that Amazon too has been able to get good margins with private labels in the United States.
In recent months, Flipkart has made plain its intention to kickstart innovation which can deliver the next phase of growth in the Indian ecommerce market, just as it once did by introducing cash-on-delivery in 2011.
Since then, it’s introduced innovations including a differentiated supply chain and end-toend service for its large appliance business, owning logistics and introducing flash sales for mobile phones.
Online retail in India will grow to $28 billion by 2020, according to a report by Kotak Institutional Equities in September 2016. The industry is expected to post compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45% between 2017 and 2020, as compared to 116% CAGR growth in China between 2009 and 2015.
Flipkart, which became India’s most valuable internet company in July 2015 when it raised capital at $15.2 billion valuation, has since seen several markdowns in valuation of shares held by US-based mutual funds.
GROWTH STRATEGIES
To spur growth, the company has aggressively signed exclusive smartphone partnerships with Motorola, Reliance Jio Lyf, Apple iPhone, Lenovo and Xiaomi. In addition, growth in fashion sales with portal Myntra and acquisition of Jabong has helped it improve gross sales. "This Make-In-India initiative could be Flipkart’s big play in the broader commerce business as products under the brand will be manufactured in India," said one of the people who briefed ET on the project.
"Make in india has caught up very well in India, looking at the way some Indian brands including Patanjali have done in the country," he said.
"Flipkart should leverage this to lobby the government as well. "Even if you don't want to go to the extent of (protectionism as in) China, even then definitely some stand should be taken to protect Indian companies," Red-Seer’s Kumar added.
At the same time, Chief Executive Officer Binny Bansal, who is driving the Flipkart Group strategy, will focus on building the company’s payments business PhonePe along with the unit head Sameer Nigam.
"Roles have clearly been defined," said a top company executive, "and this has helped bring back stability in the company," the person said. Binny Bansal replaced Sachin Bansal as the CEO of Flipkart in January. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a top executive at Tiger Global, Flipkart's largest investor, is now overlooking the commerce business.
"I have been more external focused than before building key relationships with brands, partners and government. I believe there is a need for the government to understand what we do better," Sachin Bansal told ET in an interview in August.
Flipkart's ability to lobby the government using the "Make in India" plank also comes at a crucial juncture when it is looking to close a new round of funding and prove its differentiated business model to investors against Amazon India. In markets like China where global internet giants like Amazon and Uber have been defeated by local rivals, government regulations restricting foreign companies have played a pivotal role.
However, Amazon India had also launched a dedicated "Make in India" store on its website in February this year. And India CEO Amit Agarwal has also used the initiative as an argument to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in inventory-based online commerce.
@Akask kumar
 

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My best advice is to stop reading this Mihir Sharma articles in bloomberg or any other sites..these guy is writes mostly anti-indian economy articles in foreign newspapers...
What was anti India in this article?
Reliance don't manufacture phones it just put's it sticker on chinese mobiles mostly made by ZTE
Reliance but there are many Indian Companies are doing well. Once we complete our semiconductor plant, we can make 90-95% indigenous smartphones.
 

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Reliance but there are many Indian Companies are doing well. Once we complete our semiconductor plant, we can make 90-95% indigenous smartphones.
What 90-95% seriously..?Semiconductor plants can make only processors or storage media,what about flat panel screens? camera modules? many more sensors...
 

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I'm not talking about that article..but about that asshole author...he writes mostly anti-india articles...
Neither article was anti India nor I know about track record of author. You can stop here or you can provide his Indophobic articles.
What 90-95% seriously..?Semiconductor plants can make only processors or storage media,what about flat panel screens? camera modules? many more sensors...
Not a technological challenge, already built at small scale for educational research purposes.
 

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Can India Deny Power Of Technology To Bring Educational Reforms? – Analysis
A classroom in a rural school in India.
Digital India has been envisioned as an ambitious program to transform India into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge economy. The young population in India in the last decade has become increasingly technology-driven, revealing considerable potential and readiness to imbibe and learn using digital media.
Also there have been unprecedented reforms in the education system in India at all levels, where much effort and commitment has been directed at improving the quality of education at all levels, especially at the schools.
One of the important debates in the Indian education policy has been how to improve the educational outcomes within schools. In this context increasing the quality of teachers and thereby the student outcome, is one such issue that is discussed by policy makers time and again. Digital education today is no longer limited to the four walls of a classroom. It has paved way for virtual classrooms, making learning attainable and providing easy access everywhere and every time.
The latest trends in digital education space also include adaptive and collaborative learning where a student is engaged by practicing, experiencing, sharing things and gaining knowledge in a collaborative environment. The fourth generation of communication technology is speculated to revolutionize the digital education space by providing cutting-edge user experience. Thus, the government’s focus is to integrate technology in digital learning for both urban and rural India. It is also looking at public-private-partnerships to enhance reach to rural and remote areas.
In an effort to bring rural India in to the digital age, the Centre has launched the Digital India campaign. Some of this campaign’s targets include providing broadband connectivity to a quarter of a million rural villages by 2019 and making Wi-Fi connections available in schools. However, few pertinent questions that arise are; can technology alone bring a positive impact on learning? Is it capable of solving major educational problems in India? The answer is; only if we have a clear vision on how to enable technology help students learn better and teachers teach better. Therefore, there must be deliberations on finding solutions to hurdles like affordability, accessibility, mode of delivery and content.
This further put an emphasis on the teacher educators in the teacher training institutions, who need to end the sole emphasis on academic achievements, and put in efforts to continuously update themselves in order to advance the quality of education system and the quality of students’ learning.
There are expectations from teacher training institutions, which are responsible to provide pre service training to teachers, to bring a new cadre of teachers in the country, who will be well trained to deal with the demands of the digital era.
According to the National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE, 2011); there are 12,052 teacher education institutions in India. These institutions are expected to train about 4.52 million teachers in about 5.98 lakh Primary Schools and 98 thousand High / Higher Secondary schools in the Indian education system. However, the teacher education programs have till date not yielded a way out to achieve teacher competency and teacher quality to meet the demands of digital era, where the talk-n-chalk classroom is being replaced by interactive whiteboard with projectors and speakers, which is student centric that breeds immersive learning environment.
Initiatives in Educational Technology
The young, today are facing a world in which communication and information revolution has led to changes in all spheres; scientific, technological, political, economic, social and cultural. New demands are often placed on the schools in addition to the existing ones; to be equipped with current knowledge and modern methods of acquiring new knowledge as the challenge has always been how the technology will get adopted to make a significant difference.
The continuous professional development of teachers in digital teaching strategies can change the contemporary digital divide and dismal landscape in Indian Education. Digital technologies like electronic tools, systems, devices and resources that generate store or process data are a part of teaching learning in the present era.
Teachers can collaborate to share their ideas and resources online. They can communicate with other teachers of the same field across the globe and collaborate with them, refine their work and give the best to their students.
Such an approach of teachers would definitely enhance the practice of teaching as well as both students and teachers will have an access to vast material. There are plenty of resourceful, credible websites available on the Internet that both teachers and students can utilize. The Internet also provides a variety of knowledge and doesn’t limit students to one person’s opinion. Thus, Digital India can only be accompanied by digital education that too at micro level.
Certain government initiatives such as e-education, e-basta, Nand Ghar is supposed to impart education using technologies including smart phones, mobile apps and internet services in remote rural areas. With initiative like e-basta the government aimed at making school books accessible in digital form as e-books to be read on tablets and laptops. Further, there are plans to train the play school educators to use digital tools as teaching aids.
With the various digital initiatives that the government has launched, it is assumed that such a step will help strengthen access to technology especially in government schools and preschools. Such steps from the government will prove useful for teachers to constantly innovate and adapt to changes.
Teachers shall thus develop critical, evidence-based attitudes, be adaptive to digital teaching strategies and would make efforts to facilitate digital curating culture in the education system. Already the changed perspective is evident from the fact that a good number of schools are taking steps to adopt the digital approach to learning; they have now switched to smart boards and are no longer rigid in their teaching methodologies.
Impact of Technology
The role of technology in education has been an important issue today with debates about the impact of technology on our society. The implications of quick and easy online access to information for knowledge and learning and the effect of technology on young people’s social, emotional and physical development are well recognized facts.
Teachers lack the required competencies to meet the digital education demands. The major role is to be played by the teacher training institutes but unfortunately these institutions are suited to traditional system of schooling. The inputs provided to student teachers in the teacher training institutions are traditional in nature and as per the traditional Indian classroom situations, the curriculum lack the global perspective and the need of digital knowledge base.
The present digital age of modern technologies require teachers to have deep subject knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge and the knowledge of new technologies applied to subject teaching (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). It is therefore important to take stock of what we know about the impact of digital technology on education from what we have learned till yet.
The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986 subsequently revised in 1992, the NCTE and the NCF emphasised on teacher training institutions to be prepared for the 21st century challenges and recommended replacement of rote learning in classrooms by pupil-cantered, activity cantered teaching learning process and creating an atmosphere where children feel valued.
Expectations are thus from the teacher education institutions to take a note of it and prepare themselves to meet the lifelong learning needs of the present society. Education system today has undergone a major shift from teacher dominated classes to digital generations, where students do not solely depend on teachers for knowledge gain, classrooms are virtual and multicultural and the knowledge based society and the intellectual capital has the power to control.
It is of utmost urgency for the educational institutions to change their way of working and be prepared to the need of the coming generations, where the classrooms will be comprised of multi-national children and require multilingual pedagogy, multiple approaches and methods of teaching.
To meet the present digital age challenges teachers must realise their changed role in the school management. Schools expect teachers to take decisions, keep themselves updated with knowledge, and be self improving to be able to cope with the stress of the changing times. A paradigm shift is necessary in teacher training program from a new technology development perspective, as even today teachers are not prepared for the use of digital systems and are unable to handle Intercultural classrooms. This places more responsibilities on the teacher training institutions to come out with new plans of teacher education and meet the needs of digital savvy society.
Conclusion
The ability to deal with demands of digital era and be creative to learn and transfer knowledge in different modes especially in ICT and distance modes is of major concern today.
Nevertheless, technology has the potential to improve learning outcomes when well integrated into the learning process. This puts a demand on the teacher training institutions to work towards empowering prospective teachers and enable teachers to be techno savvy in the classrooms to handle the growing demand for innovative pedagogy in the digital era.
Schools must facilitate teachers to be innovative in classrooms, to be able to create digital tools and resources, to be able to form digital teachers club, enhance online work culture and be prepared for all kinds of assessments, e.g. the online examination. This calls for a number of stakeholders to come together and support the initiative and thereby strengthen the education sector in India.
India cannot deny the power of technology in bringing educational reforms as there are almost 131 million households with cellular phones in the country. Thus, delivering education through the digital platform to children and teachers could be a potential way to bridge the education deficit.
 

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Cards, ATMs, POS will be redundant by 2020 in India: Niti AayogKant said, "They will all become redundant in India, and India will make this jump because every Indian will be doing his transaction just by using his thumb in thirty seconds...."
BENGALURU: Amid the big push being given to digital transactions post-demonetisation, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant today said cards, ATMs and POS machines would become redundant in the country by 2020.
"....India is in the midst of huge huge disruption in the world of both financial technology and in terms of social innovation (there is) huge huge innovation and this disruption will enable India to leapfrog...," he said.
"...and by 2020 my view is that in the next two-and-a-half years, India will make all its debit cards, credit cards, all ATM machines all POS machines totally irrelevant," Kant told a session at Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2017, a three-day mega event of Indian diaspora.
He said, "They will all become redundant in India, and India will make this jump because every Indian will be doing his transaction just by using his thumb in thirty seconds...."
Speaking at a session on 'Startups and innovations which have social impact in India' at the Youth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas here, he said, "What we are pushing now is digital payment in a very big way and it is a huge disruption with several innovative methods.
"India has created a back end in terms of biometric which will enable India...," he said, highlighting recently launched BHIM app and Aadhar enabled payment system initiatives.
Pointing out that India is the only country with a billion mobile and billion biometric, Kant also noted that India is largely a cash driven economy.
He said whatever the biggest attempts of demonetisation and push for digital payment, only 2 to 2.5 per cent of Indians pay taxes, so India needs to move from a non-formal to a formal economy.
"It is impossible for India to become a 10 trillion economy like this....two trillion dollar is a formal economy and another one trillion dollar is an informal black economy. It is not possible for India to grow. So you need convert the non-formal economy to a formal economy, that's what the effort is," he added.
Noting that ability of people living in rural areas to utilise technology to leapfrog is much quicker and faster than literate people living in urban areas, Kant said in social innovation and financial technology it was the young Indians who were disrupting the world.
He said they will enable India's leapfrog and take it to a 10 trillion dollar economy. "...so the young people of India must have the hunger, ambition and passion to drive India to innovation, to startups and disrupt India in a manner that it has never seen before," he added.
Noting that India is growing at about 7.6 per cent per annum, Kant said it is an oasis of growth in the midst of a "very very barren economic landscape" across the world and the challenge for the country was to grow at even higher rates of 9 or 10 per cent for a period of three decades or more.
Speaking about India's largest young population, he said it was a huge opportunity for the country.
"This is the biggest social and economic phenomenon that is taking place across the world, as the population across Europe and America is getting older, the population in India is getting younger..." he added.
 

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http://m.timesofindia.com/business/...t-bengaluru-facility/articleshow/56944302.cms
It's official: Apple will make iPhones in India at Bengaluru facility
HIGHLIGHTS
  • Apple will assemble iPhones at a facility near Bengaluru
  • No timeline has been provided, but production is expected to begin in June
BENGALURU: It's official. Apple will soon have `Made in India' iPhones, and they will come out of a factory in Bengaluru. The Karnataka government on Thursday issued a release welcoming Apple's proposal "to commence initial manufacturing operations" in the state. TOI was the first to report, in December that Apple had finalized Bengaluru as the assembling location, but officials in neither Apple nor the government were then willing to confirm the development.

The release, signed by state IT minister Priyank Kharge, said Apple's intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru "will foster cutting edge technology ecosystem and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally." Though it did not provide a timeline, production is expected to begin in June.
 

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Mobiles to make 8.2% of GDP by 2020, from 6.5% now

The contribution of mobile industry to the country's GDP will increase to 8.2 per cent by 2020, a government report said on Thursday. GDP is gross or total domestic product.
The report attributed the projection to 'The Mobile Economy, India 2016' study of global telecom body GSMA.
The joint government report, released by department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) and department of telecom (DoT), said the mobile industry contributes 6.5 per cent to the GDP currently.
"The mobile industry in India, currently contributing 6.5 per cent ($140 billion) to GDP, and employing over four million people (directly and indirectly), is projected to grow rapidly in the coming years.
Data shared by former telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in December show revenue generated by the telecom sector in 2014-15 was Rs 2,42,900 crore, accounting for 1.94 per cent of GDP.
However, the ratio of revenue size and its contribution in terms of percentage to the GDP varies every year due to variation in the growth of economy, the minister had said.
In 2011-12, the telecom sector accounted for 2.1 per cent of GDP, with revenue of Rs 1,85,930 crore, while in the next year, it stood at Rs 2,07,498 crore (2.07 per cent of GDP).
The DIPP-DoT report said the mobile industry will add 800,000 more jobs.
"In terms of unique mobile phone subscribers, India is expected to cross the 1 billion mark by 2020. India will see an increase in adoption of 4G services with number of 4G connections estimated to grow to 280 million by 2020 from just 3 million in 2015," the report said.
Total Foreign Direct Investment in telecom sector from April 2014 to March 2016 was around USD 4.19 billion.
Investment in telecom operator Vodafone lead the chart with investment of $1,500.79 million followed by Videocon International Electronics with $719.76 million, Telenor $573.15 million, Sistema Shyam Teleservices $451.83 million, Bharti Infratel $240.37 million, Idea Cellular $123.22 million.
Mobile manufacturing units generated 38,300 new jobs in last two years with Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn being top employer with workforce of 8,000.
 

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Here's How India Is Becoming A Hub For Smartphone Manufacturing In South Asia
As India becomes the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, the Indian handset industry is poised to overtake America as the second largest market in next few years.

Chinese Celkon officials (R) watch as Indian techinicians check mobile phones at the Celkon Manufacturing plant at Medchal Mandal in the Rangareddy district on the outskirts of Hyderabad . Celkon has opened its first plant in India manufacturing feature phones and smartphones. (Photo credit: NOAH SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images)
According to a recently released Government of India report, the mobile industry's contribution to the country’s GDP currently stands at 6.5% ($140 billion) and is likely to become 8.2% by 2020. Mobile manufacturing units generated 38,300 new jobs in last two years with Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn being the top employer with a workforce of 8,000. As India becomes the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, the Indian handset industry is poised to overtake America as the second largest market in next few years. This growth potential of the mobile sector has resulted in the government taking a slew of measures to ensure manufacturing under its “Make in India” initiative is centered on this lucrative sector.
India has activated policy changes that liberalized foreign direct investment (FDI) rules in mobile sector and has spelled out the definition of the term "manufacturing" to provide clarity to companies. Total FDI in the telecom sector from April 2014 to March 2016 was around $4.19 billion. Under the revised policy, foreign investment in manufacturing is automatically approved and companies can sell products produced through wholesale and retail routes, including e-commerce, without getting government permission. As per the definition by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), "Any change in the physical object resulting in transformation of the object into a distinct article with a different name or bringing a new object into existence with a different chemical composition or integral structure" would qualify as manufacturing. Companies that assemble products in India, such as those in telecom sectors, stand to gain while those that have simply been processing or relabeling products won't qualify as manufacturers.
According to Paresh Parekh, a partner at Ernst & Young, "Defining manufacturing for FDI purposes is a milestone development - CKD (complete knock down) and assembling activities stated to benefit the telecom sector.” Along with FDI initiatives, the government has provided more incentives to push local manufacturing of components. In last year’s Union Budget, as part of the phased manufacturing program (PMP) the government had included a provision to manufacture a few accessories, with the subsequent aim of making India a full-scale components manufacturing hub in the next three to four years' time. Mobile parts manufacturing is critical for a comprehensive Make in India initiative as local manufacturers principally assemble mobile devices in India by importing necessary components. According to Pankaj Mohindroo, president of Indian Cellular Association, "A fine balance has to be created in the phased manufacturing program to enable the final product assembly industry to fully blossom, so that it can attract the components industry vigorously."
Currently, more than 90% of the mobile components are imported in India and the segment relies heavily on shipments from China and Taiwan for handsets manufactured in India. To achieve its goal of making India a complete mobile manufacturing hub, the government has changed duty structures around mobile phone components such as the camera module, printed-circuit board (PCB) and keyboards. Through budget 2017 it has also tweaked customs and excise duty structure for the telecom sector. In many of these cases, earlier inputs used to attract higher duties than finished goods, making imports more attractive than the ones manufactured locally. This is expected to bring down manufacturing and compliance costs, and boost India’s competitiveness to export the India-made handsets to global markets.
Based on these slew of initiatives, in 2015-16 India had generated more than Rs 500 billion (Rs 54,000 crore) worth of locally made phones, and is expected to generate more than Rs 900 billion (Rs 94,000 crore) from 175 million units in fiscal 2016-17. According to the Indian Cellular Association (ICA), “About 40 new mobile handset manufacturing units and 15 component manufacturing units have been set up during the past year.” Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh together have accounted for half the phone manufacturing units in the country, with a capacity to produce 15 million phones a month.
Design Initiative in India
Qualcomm, which is the maker for Snapdragon processor for mobile phones, has recently announced an investment of $8.5 million via a programme titled the Qualcomm Design in India Program (QDIP). This would primarily include funding for its Innovation Labs at Hyderabad and Bangalore. In a bid to expand its design initiative in South Asia the San Diego based maker of mobile phone chips is sharpening its focus on growing the mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems in India with R&D and localization support. Through QDIP it expects to enable mobile and IoT vendors at a new Innovation Lab to be set up in Hyderabad. This will be accompanied by an expansion at the current Innovation Lab in Bengaluru to support the initiative.
Home Grown Brands
With an aim to garner a 20% mobile handset market share by 2018, Lava mobiles has aggressive strategy for strengthening its manufacturing capacity in India. It has earmarked an overall investment of more than Rs 25 billion (Rs 2,615 crores) for ramping up the existing manufacturing units. Lava has plans on setting up new manufacturing facilities to increase the overall production capacity to 216 million units per annum in the next five to eight years. Just like Lava, Intex and Micromax also have a strategy in place to expand local manufacturing capacity. Whereas Intex will invest Rs 15 billion (Rs 1,500 crore) to develop a manufacturing facility spread over eight hectares in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Micromax has already acquired land for an additional factory in Madhya Pradesh; the company plans to invest Rs 5 billion (Rs 500 crore) in the forthcoming months of 2017.
Foreign Brands
Chinese smartphone maker Gionee has acquired 50 acres of land for its own manufacturing unit in Faridabad, Haryana. The plant will have a capacity of 30 million units with an investment of Rs 5 billion (Rs 500 crore). The company currently manufacturers about 600,000 phones a month through contract manufacturers Foxconn at Sri City Integrated Business City in Andhra Pradesh. “We are very excited to have begun our India manufacturing. We would be working towards making India manufacturing a hub for not only India, but nearby countries too,” said William Lu, President of Chinese smartphone maker Gionee. Meanwhile the world’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn Technology Group has signed agreements with companies other than Gionee, such as Oppo and OnePlus to manufacture smartphones at Sri City Integrated Business City and has an arrangement in place to revive Nokia’s manufacturing plant near Chennai. One of Foxconn’s clients and the numero uno player in the global smartphone market, Apple has also shown a lot of faith in “Make In India” Initiative by announcing plans to set up a mechanized unit in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
With prominent names such as Apple and Foxconn coming on board, India has enhanced its Make In India brand's perception. In 2017 due to the slew of incentives stated above it has also developed a reliable mobile parts ecosystem that is required to assemble phones - thereby starting a journey to become a global manufacturing hub for different smartphones companies from around the world.
 

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EPFO to go online, all services a click away by August 2018

Highlights
  • Retirement fund body EPFO will go paperless by August next year as part of Digital India initiative
  • EPFO has already launched a host of online services like EPF withdrawals
  • The EPFO runs social security schemes like EPF, pension and insurance for formal sector workers

NEW DELHI: Retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) will go paperless by August next year as part of Digital India initiative, which would improve delivery of services for its five crore subscribers.


The EPFO, which runs social security schemes like EPF, pension and insurance for formal sector workers, has already launched a host of online services like EPF withdrawals.

This will be a big boom for the formal sector workers as well as their employers. The online facility would help the EPFO do away with the public interface for reducing chances of corruption and public harassment.

"The EPFO has set a target. We have decided to make electronic paper-free organisation by next the Independence Day where all services will be provided electronically (through online or mobile handsets)," Central Provident Fund Commissioner V P Joy said after flagging of a Trinaga Yatra.



He further said that once the EPFO goes paperless, people would not have to visit the offices to get their work done and save man hours.

Joy also talked about the EPFO's housing scheme where the body provides facility to make down payment to buy home and pay equated monthly instalment through their EPF accounts.

The EPFO has a corpus of over Rs 10 lakh crore. It had managed investible deposits of Rs 1.5 lakh crore last fiscal.

The EPFO runs three schemes -- Employees Provident Fund Scheme 1952, Employees Pension Scheme 1995 and Employees Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme 1976.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...-away-by-august-2018/articleshow/60210070.cms
 

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