Sridhar Vembu Praises India's Manufacturing Shift: 'This Trend is Key'

Zoho's Chief Scientist, Sridhar Vembu, praised India's expanding manufacturing capabilities, emphasizing the importance of building complex machines cost-effectively to bolster the country's industrial foundation.

“This is the trend Indian manufacturing needs,” he said while acknowledging on a social media post by Thomas Savan, who has shared his experiences from industrial perspective in Maharashtra and Gujarat, where mid-sized Indian firms are now manufacturing high-precision machines that were previously imported from Germany.

"I am very happy to see this tweet. It makes me want to go visit these companies! We have to demonstrate the ability to make complex machines that make advanced products and we need to make those machines affordable,” Vembu wrote on X.   

Thomas Savan said that he had been moving around Maharashtra and Gujarat industrial areas, analyzing things  and meeting some clients. “ Most of them are 500-1000 crore companies. The kind of work they are doing has to be seen to be believed.”

“I went to a unit in Pune, they are now making the same machines they used to import from Germany to make super low tolerance metal parts. They are now exporting worldwide. White pills everywhere. These small/mid professionally run costs will change the face of the Indian economy,” Savan wrote.

Vembu, a strong proponent of India’s self-reliance in manufacturing, has earlier highlighted the importance of a phased approach to industrial growth, taking lessons from China’s rise in manufacturing. "At the entry level, India must make its own household goods (all the stuff we buy in local stores in small towns), and spread those small and mid-sized factories to every district of India. It is not that hard and it can work out cheaper to make and sell locally than to import from far away,” he expressed it in an earlier post.

To boost the value of the chain, Vembu said there was a need for strong strategic industrial R&D across all areas of technology. He stated that China already began its process with low-cost manufacturing four decades ago; they have mastered high-value technology in the past 10-15 years.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently defended the 'Make in India' initiative, stating that production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes have attracted investments of Rs 1.5 lakh crore and generated 9.5 lakh jobs. She rejected opposition claims of the initiative's failure, emphasizing that it has bolstered domestic manufacturing, including in the defence sector, where India is now a net exporter.

The finance minister also criticized previous UPA governments, claiming their free trade agreements hindered India's industrial growth and are now being renegotiated.