Govt mulling electronics component linked incentive scheme to boost domestic manufacturing: Meity Secretary

New Delhi: The government is working on a new component-linked incentive scheme to encourage the production of electronics parts besides semiconductors, a top government official said on Tuesday. While speaking at the launch of made-in-India Milkyway tablets, Ministry of Electronics and IT Secretary S Krishnan said that the government has been talking to industry for design and make in India products and the other focus has been increasing local value addition. "The private sector is stepping up. We hope in Meity to have a component linked incentive scheme in the coming months which will assist this movement towards making India both a product nation and increasingly a nation that produces more components," Krishnan said.

He along with Consumers Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh unveiled a 4G tablet developed by non-profit organisation EPIC Foundation. The tablet has been designed in India and will be produced locally by electronic manufacturing services company VVDN and JioPhone maker United Telecoms (UTL). "VVDN designed the tablets for us with the help of Mediatek. It would not have been possible to design the tablet without help of Mediatek. The tablet production will depend on market dynamics. We are open to partnering with anyone who is interested to make these tablets locally or develop any product of their own on top of it. We will share all the designs. Our objective is to design in India," EPIC, Founder and Chairman, Ajai Chowdhry told reporters.

Built on Android, Milkyway comes in different variants with 3GB and 4GB RAM, 32 GB and 64 GB storage, 3 megapixel (MP) front camera and 8 MP back camera and will retail at Rs9,999. EPIC has onboarded artificial intelligence from local start-up CoRover.ai that will provide multilingual virtual assistant BharatGPT. Iris Waves will market and provide after sales service for Milkyway. Chowdhry said that Milkyway can be repaired at component level which is not possible in imported products. When asked about the reason for a 4G tablet in times of 5G, Chowdhry said 5G is not available everywhere in the country. UTL Chairman P Raja Mohan Rao said that his company will get the order and manufacture 2 lakh Milkyway tablets every year. He said that UTL will pay a royalty fee to EPIC. Vedavaag Systems has placed an order for 12,000 tablets. It will use a tablet for banking correspondent service.