Myriad opportunities are available to excel in India, says Minister
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has told auto components industry to grab the opportunity and work with all stakeholders to capture emerging opportunities to be global players.
“India is at an inflection point where myriad opportunities are available to excel,” he said, calling on the industry to work together as a team, with all stakeholders, including the government and become what the world wants it to become.
He urged the auto components industry to reflect on the level of investments and time and effort that they have been putting in to develop new technology, new designs, new products and thus help India’s indigenization and localization efforts.
He observed that several sectors and companies were reaping an ROI that was many times their investment in innovation and R&D.
“As a nation, if we address the twin challenges of productivity and quality, India would excel with its technology level, managerial capabilities, skilled workforce and commitment levels. With focus on these two aspects, India would also excel in price competitiveness and succeed in meeting the needs of both India and the world,” Goyal underlined.
The Minister called to attention the obvious synergies between auto component manufacturing and defence indigenization and urged the industry to focus their efforts on promoting indigenous manufacturing and building self-reliance in defence technology.
He also asked organizations like ACMA to hand-hold and support startups by interacting with them, providing them new opportunities, reward and encourage their R&D setbacks, treating it as stepping stones to success. Instant success comes but very rarely in R&D.
“It is a long haul but India must go down that path,” he stressed.
The Minister asked the auto components industry to also focus on formalizing the informal portion of the sector to ensure that duplicate components don’t affect India’s credibility in the world market.
Goyal said that India would be the next frontier of technology, development, production, supply and would serve the world honourably, while respecting the environment and sustainability.
“Sustainability and respect for nature came naturally to us and was ingrained in our cultural and civilizational ethos,” he said, urging the industry to ensure that the entire supply chain of auto manufacturing worked to promote Indian industry by supporting and empowering suppliers of raw materials and components, even if that meant incurring extra costs in the short run.
“In the long run, we will succeed in creating a robust ecosystem for manufacturing in India,” said the Minister, asking big companies to narrow down on tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers and see how they could be supported and encouraged. fiinews.com
