Zoho's Sridhar Vembu hails India's manufacturing shift: 'This is the trend we need to follow'

Zoho's Chief Scientist Sridhar Vembu on Wednesday hailed India’s growing manufacturing capabilities, stressing the need to build complex machines affordably to strengthen the country’s industrial base.

"This is the trend Indian manufacturing needs," he said while responding to a post by Thomas Savan, who shared his experiences from industrial zones 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, 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 cos will change the face of Indian economy,” Savan wrote. 

Vembu, a vocal advocate for India’s self-reliance in manufacturing, has previously stressed the need for a phased approach to industrial growth, drawing lessons from China’s manufacturing rise. "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 stated in an earlier post.

To scale the value chain, Vembu said there was a need for strong strategic industrial R&D across all areas of technology. He noted that while China began its journey with low-cost manufacturing four decades ago, it has mastered high-value technology in the last 10-15 years. 

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently defended 'Make in India', saying that production-linked incentive (PLI) schemes have attracted Rs 1.5 lakh crore in investments and created 9.5 lakh jobs. She dismissed opposition claims that ‘Make in India’ had failed, stating that it has strengthened domestic manufacturing, including in the defence sector, where India is now a net exporter. 

The finance minister also took a swipe at previous UPA governments, arguing that their free trade agreements weakened India's industrial growth and are now being renegotiated.