At a session on creating domestic device manufacturers, at Nasscom Product Conclave, speakers quoted their own experiences to argue that it is time for India to create its own products, as it becomes a high consumption market.

Lava International Co-founder Vishal Sehgal said, given the opportunity in India, especially in areas like mobile, healthcare, education etc, entrepreneurs can look at creating product companies here out of their understanding of the conditions. The successful product makers also emphasised the need for in-house designing and R&D to evolve the products within the country.

Snap Networks CEO & Director Ashish Aggarwal said there is a lateral shift in today’s ecosystem. With 40 people at an average age of 25, one could do products at one fourth of cost in India. This indicates the need to create stronger ecosystem here.

The conditions towards turning the country into a product hub has been happening, insisted Qualcomm India Senior Director for Sales & Busines Development Dinesh Prasad, who said chip makers have a referral design programme in India to improve the mobile handsets coming out of the country.

“There is a need to put together all the vital ingredients for product development.” he said, adding  the challenge is that software development in India is largely catering to global application development demand.

Our design capabilities are fragmented and hardware manufacturing ecosystem constrained by policy.