The Indian manufacturing sector has some major disabilities that must be removed to become globally significant, Pawan Kumar Goenka, Managing Director of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd said.
“Investment decisions by many of us here are conservative and India has tremendous cost disadvantages because of power cost, logistics cost and cost of regulatory compliances,” he said during a virtual meeting that was organised by the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) to celebrate its Chamber Day. He further pointed out that India is lagging behind in capabilities in high tech manufacturing and its share in global high tech trade is under 1% while Germany's share is 8%, Korea 8% and China 26%. “India does not have a strong manufacturing brand — most affluent Indians use foreign brands,” he said, adding that there are very few areas where India owns technology and IPR. “There is very little technological innovation happening in India,” he said.
He also stressed that India needs to have the right infrastructure to bring in investments into this space like what China and Vietnam did.
Mr. Goenka pointed out that India has huge potential when it comes to electric vehicles specifically for shared mobility. “Now is the time to invest in technologies pertaining to electric vehicles,” he said.
