Centre’s Electronic developed Policy proposed a fund of $1641.49 million as Electronic Development Fund to boost the domestic electronic systems design and manufacturing capacity(ESDM). The fund is now set to be rolled out in a couple of months.
Government aims to promote innovation, scholar property, research and development, nanoelectronics through this funding. Additionally, the find will also help to commercialise Made In India products and focus on minimizing the imports.
A senior official associated with Ministry for Industry Promotion in ESDM sector said, “The secretary in the department of Electronics and IT(DeitY) had forwarded the guidelines on the fund’s corpus among others to the ministry and we expect cabinet approval soon”. He added that a recent cabinet note on policy was influenced by market dynamics and ministry is keen on promoting this fund at least up to 2020.
Deity in its National Policy on Electronics predicted India’s demand for electronics in 2020 at whooping $400 billion and domestic demand would reach $100 billion. The proposal for setting up this fund dates back to 2005 but it faced a lot of hurdles. The recent problem was created by IPC(Investment Promotion Cell) of IT ministry which quoted “Adequate justification had not been provided to set up the venture capital fund for electronic ecosystem development”.
Deity proposed allocation of this fund for various activities. It expected 25 to 49 per cent of the fund for seed purpose, early growth stage activities in electronics and technology acquisition. Similarly, it proposed 25 per cent of the fund for development of electronic ecosystem and manufacturing.
However, IPC still believes that 100 percent government supported venture capital fund cannot boost the private sector participation and suggested to include telecom department as one of its member of the funding board. DoT was a member of NMCC(National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council) and policy of DeitY has close link with manufacturing of telecom equipment.
