Amazon’s first manufacturing line in India According to Amazon’s company blog, the company announced that it is planning to start manufacturing Amazon Devices in India. In fact, this is the […]
According to Amazon’s company blog, the company announced that it is planning to start manufacturing Amazon Devices in India. In fact, this is the first Amazon manufacturing line in India. The decision shows their intention to support Indian Government’s initiative called “Make in India” for an Atmanirbhar Bharat.
Amazon will sell its manufactured product by making a partnership with Cloud Network Technology, which is a subsidiary of Foxconn in Chennai. It will start production later this year. The announcement mentions that it will be able to produce hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Stick devices every year. Amazon will continuously evaluate scaling capacity for additional marketplaces/cities based on the domestic demand.
As we can see the background of “Make in India” in its official homepage, the Make in India initiative was launched by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in September 2014. It was a part of nation-building initiatives. The aim of the initiative is to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub.
“Make in India” was a timely response to a critical situation. By 2013, the emerging markets bubble had been over, and India’s growth rate had fallen to its lowest level in a decade. As a result, many people saw India as one of the so-called “Fragile Five”. Global investors considered whether the world’s largest democracy was a risk or an opportunity. India’s 1.2 billion citizens also doubted whether India was too big to succeed or too big to fail at that time. India needed its government’s supports to move the situation forward.
India’s government set a new term called “Aatmnirbhar Bharat” or Self-reliant India to establish the foundation for the long-term reformation and growth in its crucial sectors. Thanks to “Aatmnirbhar Bharat”, it is expected that plenty of business setups, migrants, vendors and indigenous families will be able to receive some benefits. The government wants to save the lives of suppressed sectors and people. It wants to transform the time of crisis into the time of opportunity based on “Aatmnirbhar Bharat” as well.
If Indian government wants to realize “Aatmnirbhar Bharat”, “Make in India” is a crucial strategy. This is because, like other Asian countries, India tries to accelerate its industrialization to increase GDP per capita. Of course, there are lots of high skilled people such as data scientist, web programmers and Artificial Intelligence specialists in India. However, every citizen of 1.35 billion population might not able to be these kind of skilled workers. Therefore, if the government wants to escape the middle-income trap, its supports and initiatives are indispensable. We can see the other example of Indonesian government’s actions in other article.
In this sense, Amazon, which is one of the largest market capitalization companies, refers both “Make in India” and “Aatmnirbhar Bharat” in its official blog. This is a huge step for the country. In addition to this, Tesla, which is the most valuable automotive company, declared that it operates in India. Because of the number of population, democracy, English speaking citizens and high-skilled workers, India is getting to attract manufacturing companies.
