Intex, Lava, Micromax have had their say on import duty hike on mobile phones

The government has increased basic customs duty to 20 percent from 15 percent in the Union Budget 2018. The announcement is aimed to boost the domestic smartphone brands. Here’s what the CXOs of Indian smartphone brands have to say on Budget 2018.

Sanjeev Agarwal, chief manufacturing officer, Lava International
Local manufacturing will create more job opportunities, benefiting the youth and contributing towards the overall growth of the economy.”

Rajesh Aggarwal, Co-Founder Micromax
This year’s Budget has brought significant changes, focusing on various key aspects which are largely stressed upon our overall economic growth – Rural, Agriculture, Ease of doing business, skilled based education, job creation, healthcare, housing, Structural reforms and infrastructure development which will help stimulate and strengthen the Indian economy

The emphasis is on establishing a programme to bring in direct efforts towards building a holistic ecosystem for Artificial intelligence. The focus on AI is a welcome move towards technological advancements in India and an allocation of INR 3073 crore for the Digital India scheme will certainly propel digital adoption and smartphone adoption in the country.
The increase in customs duty on Mobiles will encourage local manufacturing. As India is becoming the global hub for manufacturing, the measures taken by the government will surely grow confidence among st the manufacturers and I strongly believe that this will further create business and human resource opportunities as well. Also, with the government’s move to invest in over 5 lakh WIFI Hotspots, will enable rural India to have Broadband access which in turn will be a significant stepping stone in the Digital India movement.

The government’s measures towards the import duty on printed circuit boards (PCBs), camera modules, connectors and other components that go into making smartphones, will boost the Make in India initiative and will relentlessly pursue in curbing imports and building value addition in the country. Micromax is deeply connected on the Make in India initiative with 3 running factories and we support this.

However, the increase in customs duty on the certain parts of TV might affect the manufacturing ecosystem adversely. We need the government to help in creating an improved local manufacturing and a better component ecosystem for the consumer electronics manufacturers as well. With focus on growth, it is the budget to look forward that would add an impetus to the India’s growth story.
Mahesh Lingareddy, Founder & Chairman of Smartron

Union Budget 2018 has given clear indications of a continued focus on the growth of new businesses in India. The announcement of increase in basic customs duty on mobile phones to 20% is a concrete step towards fostering local manufacturing in India which would further fuel indigenous innovation. This will allow us to build an innovation engine pipeline of several global brands in the country. As India’s first global OEM and IOT brand with a vision of putting India on the global innovation map, the Union Budget would prove to be the necessary catalyst for our continued growth towards becoming a multi-billion dollar company globally.

India needs an investment (VC) ecosystem that can pump in US$15-US$20 billion every year to support and sustain a 5000+ startup ecosystem. Union Budget 2018 has taken the needs of the ecosystem into consideration by taking policy decisions to build a robust alternative investment regime in the country along-with a taxation model designed for the special nature of VC funds and angel investors. These policies and new taxation model would definitely help the start-ups to ensure survival and profitability over the years. As India’s first global OEM and IoT brand, Smartron believes in collective innovation and this year’s Union Budget would help us in our long term vision of bringing in the start-ups together on a single platform to innovate at the global level.

Rajeev Jain, Director and CFO, Intex Technologies

The Budget is focused towards increasing the personal disposable income in rural India and critical areas like education, health and infrastructure. This will further enhance the Make in India initiative of the Government in critical electronic industry particularly mobile, which is the key product of all the Government’s initiatives.