India's goal of achieving higher level of production in the electronics and semiconductors industry depends largely on favourable government policy and development of an ecosystem for manufacture of electronic components in the country, Ajay Chowdhry, one of the founder members of IT and technology firm HCL, said.

The domestic consumption of electronics is forecast to reach $400 billion by 2020 from $45 billion in financial year 2009. Country needs to scale up the domestic production significantly to meet this demand from the present level of $20-$320 billion by that year. This will call for massive demand growth for semiconductors thus driving the need for local chip fabrication.

However, Ajay Chowdhry, chairman, HCL Infosystems pointed out that the electronics production may reach only $104 billion by 2020 with the current policy regime. The production target of $320 billion could be achieved only with the favourable policy framework and creating a conducive climate for electronics component and semi conductor production in the country. Production of electronics components is almost non-existence now here.

While the country has made good progress on the semiconductor industry as lot of design developments happen across country. But over 90 per cent of these developments are meant only for global markets as most of these works came to India as part of research and development (R&D) outsourcing by global firms, he said while addressing a session at the 98th Indian Science Congress.

However, welcome steps are being taken by the government in R&D through formation of CAREL, by the Principal Scientific Adviser with a vision to make India self-reliant in electronics production and prepare technology roadmap for electronics hardware. There should be initiatives to create products for domestic consumption through frugal electronics engineering.

Country needs to identify, set directions and goals and create an environment to foster R&D out of specialized labs, education institutions and in the private industry. The collaboration of different expertise should translate research into successful, monetized IP and products for the nation, he noted.