Wednesday, December 31, 2014: Government has established a joint task force, which will involve industry representatives from Samsung, Microsoft Devices and Lava, with an aim to change the nation’s mobile phone manufacturing ecosystem and achieve the set target of developing 500 million units of mobile handsets by 2019. Pankaj Mohindroo, Industry body Indian Cellular Association (ICA) national president has been assigned as the Chairman for the task force.
Josh Foulger, Nokia SEZ president and director, India operations and Lava Co-Founder Hari Om Rai have been appointed as co-chairman of the task force. Other members in the board are, Samsung India Managing Director BD Park, Sony India Kenichiro Hibi, Microsoft Devices Director for Government relations Sandeep Bhargava, LG India MD Soon H Kwon and Micromax Informatics Co-founder Vikas Jain.
SK Marwah and Asha Nangia, the directors at the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) will represent the government in this task force. Under the office memorandum, DEITY has announced, establishment of a ‘Fast Track task Force’ to ‘re-establish and catalyse significant growth in mobile handset and component manufacturing ecosystem in India.’
Also the terms of reference of the task force in the office memorandum involves bringing in of ‘large scale manufacturing/ assembly activity to attain production of 500 million units of mobile handsets by 2019, thereby reaching the total count of annual manufacturing of Rs 1500,000 million to 3000,000 million. Such large scale production can create employment opportunity for over 1.5 million people
