In big Atmanirbhar Bharat push, Amazon to begin Electronic Devices manufacturing in India

In a massive development in giving the manufacturing sector an Atmanirbhar push, E-Commerce and technology giant Amazon has decided to begin Electronic Devices manufacturing in India. A virtual meeting took place on Tuesday between Union Minister for Electronics & IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and Amazon India Country Head Amit Agarwal in this regard. The manufacturing unit will be set up in Chennai. 

Amazon also put out a blog post to elaborate on the new development. The company said it will commence its manufacturing efforts with contract manufacturer Cloud Network Technology, a subsidiary of Foxconn in Chennai and start production later this year. Apple, another bigwig from the domain technology, also has its manufacturing set up at Foxconn's Chennai plant. Apple produces four models of the iPhones in India through its manufacturing partners Foxconn and Wistron.

"The device manufacturing program will be able to produce hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Stick devices every year, catering to the demands of customers in India. Amazon will continuously evaluate scaling capacity to additional marketplaces/cities depending on the domestic demand, the blog post said.

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Expressing delight on the development, Ravi Shankar Prasad said this move will enhance domestic production capacities and create jobs while being in line with the mission of creating an Atmanirbhar Bharat which is digitally empowered. Amit Agarwal, Amazon India country head said his company is committed to partner with the Indian government to advance the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.

"Amazon is committed to partner with the Indian government to advance the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat. We have pledged to invest US $1 billion to digitize 10 million small and medium businesses, help Indian businesses sell worldwide thereby enabling US $10B in cumulative exports, and create an additional 1MM jobs by 2025," the blog post said quoting Amit Agarwal.

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Atmanirbhar Bharat push

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union government has placed much importance on going "vocal for local" while also encouraging startups and entrepreneurship culture to develop in the country. The Government has highlighted the need for manufacturing indigenous products to give a boost to the country's economy and moving towards self-reliance while the Union Budget 2021 also pledged enough funds for infrastructure in this regard.

As the world economy took a massive blow due to the Coronavirus pandemic and countries realised the risk of depending on a single country China for their manufacturing demands is like putting all eggs in one basket, India hopes to attract significant foreign investment in the manufacturing sector. A majority of the nations such as the US, Japan, South Korea rely on China; however, they are contemplating making the switch after China's debacle in managing the deadly virus outbreak. Countries have also insisted on their corporations to either relocate production units or set up alternate units outside China.

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