HMD Global, which holds the licence to manufacture and sell Nokia-branded phones, is planning to grow its manufacturing and sourcing from India to meet its global demand.

“In the context of the new geopolitical crisis developing very fast between the West and the East, our motto is to create, source, make and later on export from India and this is currently at a very serious level discussion at the highest level of the company,” said Jean Francois Baril, Executive Chairman, HMD Global.

He was delivering a virtual keynote address at the inaugural session of the 19th edition of Connect 2020, an event organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), jointly with the Government of Tamil Nadu, and co-hosted by STPI - Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), Government of India.

“We are already manufacturing everything that we sell in India but sourcing is yet to pick up at global proposition,” Baril added.

He also said that the company's vision goes well with India’s ambition to become a $5-trillion economy and the country’s export-oriented approach after meeting its self-reliance goals.

“So, it is utmost important that we balance the work and support India to become the next generation of hi-tech in this cluster,” said Baril. The Finnish device maker recently raised $230 million from investors like Nokia Technologies, Google and Qualcomm.

TN as South Asian ICT hub

In his chief guest address, RB Udhayakumar, Tamil Nadu’s Minister for Revenue and Disaster Management and Information Technology, said the State government is actively promoting the IT sector with the objective of making the State the information and communications technology (ICT) hub of South Asia.

“IT & ITes exports increased by 12 per cent to ₹1.39-lakh crore in 2019-20, as against ₹1.23-lakh crore in the previous year,” Udhayakumar said, adding, “Employment by the sector grew nearly 12 per cent to 7.4 lakh in 2019-20.”

The minister added the government is actively engaging with the industry to strengthen and develop the IT sector across the State, particularly in the tier 2 and 3 cities.

“The rural broadband project (Bharat Net) is being implemented in the State with an investment of ₹1,850 crore, through which 12,524 villages will be connected through an optical fibre network and provided with not less than 1GB high speed network connectivity in each village,” Udhayakumar added.

Hans Raj Verma, Additional Chief Secretary – IT, Government of Tamil Nadu, in his special address, said that being strategically located on the east coast of India, Tamil Nadu is a natural choice for data centres in the country.

Digital enablement

Delivering a keynote address C Vijayakumar, President & CEO, HCL Technologies, said digital transformation has offered safety to customers, employees and businesses ever since the onset of the pandemic.

Noting that digital will play the role of lead architect in almost every sector in the future, he said: “To create a recovery blueprint that is holistic, sustainable and rapid, we need to think of digital enablement in three layers: digital foundation, digital business opportunities and digital operations.”

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