Saturday, August 02, 2014: The electronics policy, still in its implementation stage, has hit a bump because of differences cropping between the Department of Electronics and information technology (Deity) and IT ministry’s Investment Promotion Cell.
The government had proposed to create an (EDF) of around $2 billion to promote innovation, intellectual property, research and development, nanoelectronics and help commercialise made in India products so that India is not dependent on imports.
Deity proposed the fund to be used for various activities which included 25 to 49 percent of the fund for seed, early growth stage across spectrum of activities in electronics acquisition. It also proposed 25 per cent for infrastructure related to electronics ecosystem development and production.
However, the Investment cell has asked for adequate justification which was not provided to set up the venture capital fund for the infrastructure of electronic ecosystem.
DeitY had proposed separate sub funds for different portion of value chain which includes R&D, seed, early growth stage fund and commercialisation of R&D. 100 per cent government backed VC fund will not be able to leverage the strength of private sector. Separate sub funds can be created for different types of technology such as medical, electronics, telecom etc.
It suggested that Department of Telecom should be included as one of the members of EDF managing board since DoT was a member National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council and the policy of Deity has close relations with manufacturing of telecom equipment.
