“Electronics is going to reshape our future. I don’t think there is any other country in the world that has the kind of infrastructure that India has. The public digital infrastructure that India has is second to none. It has transformed the lives of each and every citizen of this country,” said Banmali Agrawala, Chairman, Tata Advanced Systems (TASL), the aerospace and defence solutions unit of Tata Sons.

The global trade in services is about $7 trillion; in manufactured goods, it is $15 trillion, including electronics at $5 trillion. However, India’s share overall in manufacturing, particularly in electronics manufacturing, is almost negligible. “If there is such a large and massive opportunity staring us in the face, I would wonder as to why we would not be looking at this opportunity,” he said in his keynote address on Electronics: Rapidly reshaping the future at the TN Global Investors Meet 2024.

There is a global realignment of the supply chain that is going on. The world is emphasising certainty of supply over just the cost of supply. India does get to be an attractive destination, he said.

“With India being a heavily digitised country and the fact that the size of opportunity in the electronics sector is so large and has tailwinds to support what we want to do, I would argue that it would be a completely wasted opportunity if we did not take this on. This is a phenomenal opportunity that we must embrace,” he said.

“If we want to develop Indian brands, we better know how to make them. Then, we shall know how to design it and, at a later stage, get it made elsewhere. We cannot leapfrog straight into high-end design,” he said.

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