The Hindu Business Line : Come, work with us, RCom tells EMS industry

Bangalore, Feb. 19 Having set up and run Flextronics’ operations in India, Mr A. Gururaj, has a good feel of the electronic manufacturing services (EMS) industry in India. Now, in his next assignment as a Senior Vice-President – Manufacturing Projects with Reliance Communications, he is a customer of EMS. His view from the other side of the fence is one that is ridden with gaps.

Speaking at the Vision Summit, a conference of the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA), Mr Gururaj rued that there was not a good, competitive supply chain in India. Reliance Communications has a need for a lot of products—handsets for CDMA and GSM services, set top boxes for DTH, for example—and would like to get these manufactured in India.

He said that Reliance Communications wants to “identify and partner with ODMs (original device manufacturers)/ EMS.”

(It is learnt that a Chinese company, Kimpo, will assemble handsets for Reliance Communications from a base in Mumbai. Asked about this, Mr Gururaj just nodded a confirmation, but refused to give any additional details.)

Making India cheaper

Indeed, when a questioner asked Mr Gururaj if RCom would buy from local manufacturers even if there was an opportunity to import cheaper, he said, “we will make India cheaper.”

Pointing to a line in his slide-show presentation that said that Reliance Communications wanted to “leverage India’s manufacturing ability for competitiveness,” Mr Gururaj implored the audience to “read between the lines.”

He said that there were many areas where Indian companies could set up units, aiming for Reliance business. For example, “there are not enough tool rooms here. Most of the tools come from abroad,” he said.

More Stories on : Hardware | Reliance Communications Ltd

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