“Electronic manufacturing sector has the potential to create 16 million additional jobs in the next four years, and 28 million jobs in the next ten years, if we could focus on policies and interventions that create a critical mass in terms of production facilities and staying power in manufacturing,” said Mr Ramamurthy Sivakumar, Managing Director, Intel India.

Addressing the High Octane Keynote Panel Discussion on “Smart Sourcing – the Future of India” at Connect 2010, India’s premier ICT event, being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), here today, Mr Sivakumar said that India is becoming the consumption power house for electronics hardware.  Today, it is consuming electronic equipment worth US$ 40 billion – by 2014, this will increase to US$125 billion and by 2020, to US$400 billion,” he said. He also urged the need for a confluence of various players and forces such as telecos, policies, ISVs, manufacturers, hardware design, and OEMs for the country to make it big in hardware manufacturing.

“India already has 2 billion devices such as laptops, desktops, handheld devices, embedded products, etc. By 2020, the number will go up to 15 billion, as the processing power, and user experience increase, and the prices come down,” he said and added, “People are going for these devices because they are delivering values.

According to him 2010 is the landmark year for IT adoption, as India has made big progress in Aadhar, India’s multipurpose national identity card, which would solve key national issues and getting 100 million broadband connections.  “When it comes to Tamil Nadu, the State Government’s healthcare system is already benefitting four million people and by 2014 the number of beneficiaries is expected to go up to 40 million. In education, Tamil Nadu has already brought 65% of schools under its computerisation programme. The reach is expected to be 100% by 2014.

In his address, Mr V S Gopi Gopinath, Chairman & CEO, AT&T Global India, said that IP transformation, mobility, and moving the applications into cloud computing are the three big factors that will determine the effectiveness of smart sourcing and offer companies the flexibility and capability to deliver products and services anytime, anywhere, and importantly, to any device.

“The future is in mobility and the impact of smart phones like iPhone, machine to machine interactions and mobile-integrated devices are proving to be big. The world is moving from 3G to Long Term Evolution (LTE). The cloud computing will enable companies to avoid installation time and to install enterprise software within weeks, if not, days,” he said.

Mr Gopinath said that thanks to the coming down of telecommunication cost and de-regulation of the telecommunications sector across the world, it has become easy for companies to move work, manufacturing and services to any location. Telecom plays a vital role in linking enterprises and service providers using one common platform to ensure superior agility, acceleration of innovation and capability.

In his opening remarks, Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, Vice Chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions, said that in an increasingly globalized world, where countries can buy anything from anywhere, there is a need for India to become an effective trade partner. “We need to produce whatever we produce at the best possible way, adhering to good quality and standards, and provide the products at affordable price. The outsourcing and offshoring will not happen if India is not going to achieve high levels of excellence, as people will go to other smart powers that offer compelling propositions,” he said.

Mr Narayanan said that ultimately what we consume may determine the national competitiveness and economic activity. “Whether it is making micro-chips or potato chips, India should focus on those areas that increase its scope for adopting technology innovation. It is not necessary that we have to get into producing what we consume,” he said.

Participating in the panel, Prof M S Ananth, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, said that there is large demand for education and faculties in India, and ICT is the only alternative to brick and mortar universities. India will have its first virtual university within the next two years, offering thousands of courses on video and web. He said that in 2001, Indian colleges turned out only 2,00,000 engineering graduates but today they are producing over 9,00,000 graduates. Technology-enhanced learning, where lectures are combined with animation, illustrations and wikis, is the solution to meet the growing demand.

Mr S Mahalingam, Chairman, Connect 2010, and Executive Director & Chief Financial Officer, Tata Consultancy Services, in his address, said that the Indian software industry was created with a disruptive model based on cost-advantage, scale-advantage and on-site/off-shore model. However, the disruption can also happen in business model, competition. Unless we do some disruption, the competition from China, Vietnam, Philippines, etc will take India over.  “Our industries in automobile, healthcare, entertainment, etc should create a unique India experience in whatever they offer by using our advantages in ICT,” he said.