Egon Zehnder International recently organized a platform for a professional exchange of views on what issues India must address to improve its attractiveness as a manufacturing destination.
From a historical perspective, Indian manufacturing has focused on addressing the needs of its large, price-sensitive, domestic market. Over the years, Indian players have placed greater emphasis on cost, building the perception that cost is more important in the cost-quality trade-off. More importantly, they have aimed for low volumes and this reflects on the country’s limited capabilities in large-scale manufacturing. The depth of India’s engineering talent is a legacy of its past when people had to innovate and improvise given the limited resources, but its overall manufacturing capabilities are still not as highly evolved as that of their Chinese counterparts. Vendor development and sourcing remain a concern. While Indian players have carved a niche in highvariety, low-volume production, there is still some way to go in mass manufacturing. Their counterparts in Vietnam or China show a greater willingness to learn and improve, and are fiercely competitive. In this context, eight senior executives from the manufacturing sector got together to come up with what should be done to boost India’s competitiveness in manufacturing.
The session was moderated by
Neeraj Sagar and
Sanjiv Sachar of Egon Zehnder International.
