Wednesday, September 04, 2013: It was in 2006 when Flextronics had set up a factory in Sriperumbdur near Chennai, and the company had plans to have around 8,500 employees in 24-36 months from then. Even after seven years of operations, the company could grow only to a level of 4,000 employees. The reason is lack of encouragement for domestic electronics manufacturing from the government side.
While speaking to the Business Line, Ashok Dhawan, country manager, Flextronics, said, “The Government has not encouraged domestic electronics component manufacturers. Too much of import is hurting our plans.”.
The factory, located 40 km off Chennai, has the utilisation level of about 35 per cent. While, the Chinese facility of the company has 100 per cent of the utilisation level. The company is now exploring the possibilities of “whether some of the products from China can be manufactured at Sriperumbudur.”
Dhawan, who was speaking while making an announcement about setting up of the company’s Global Business Services centre in Chennai, said, “Revenue from the Sriperumbudur factory is around $100 million. It is nowhere near our hopes of three to four times more.”
This $24-billion company works with brands like Nokia and Microsoft and help them design, build, ship and service their products. It has a network of facilities in about 30 countries across the globe. Dhawan asserted that Government is now realising the issues related with Indian electronics industry and there are some positive news coming in as well for the help of the industry. But, “The government is killing one industry and encouraging the other through huge imports,” he said.
