Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications and IT (MCIT), led a delegation, from Jan 28-Feb 1, 2013, to Silicon Valley, California, USA, to market investment opportunities in the Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) in India. The delegation included J Satyanarayana, secretary, DeitY, and Dr Ajay Kumar, joint secretary, DeitY, Prof Rajat Moona, DG, CDAC and Deepak Sharma, additional director, DeitY.
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) organised two major events, one in San Jose and the other in Irvine in connection with the visit of the delegation from India. Over 250 entrepreneurs participated in the event in San Jose. Over 100 entrepreneurs participated in the event in Irvine. Several people working in the ESDM sector in the Silicon Valley expressed interest in the new sunrise sector of ESDM in India.
The delegation also held several one-to-one meetings with CEOs of multinational companies. These included John Chambers of CISCO, Mike Splinter of Applied Materials, Jore Sola of Sanmina, Bill Muir of Jabil, Lip Bu Tan of Cadence, among others.
CEOs of Indian companies based out of CEO like Raju Vegesna of Sify Technologies also met with the delegation and expressed interest in the opportunities. Some NRIs who are active in the field of ESDM also met the delegation and shared their perspective regarding the development of the sector. Among the prominent ones included Prof A Paulraj at Stanford, Anant Agrawal, Nambi Seshadri, Gagan Madan, Jag Kapoor, Preet Virk, Krishna Yarlagadda, and Dinakar C Munagala. USIBC organised a round table with the visiting delegation to express their interest in the new Electronics Policy and how their members could participate in the sector.
The visit was able to evince keen interest from several key players in the industry to invest in India. The industry players are expected to complete their due diligence and make announcements over the next few months. The minister assured that all possible support will be provided to genuine investors in the sector.
It has been decided that a Japan Desk will be established in DeitY to expedite and facilitate the proposals of investment from Japanese companies, to facilitate their interactions with the other agencies of Government of India and with the State Governments.
