Is it really, ‘Make in India’ products?

While the stakeholders in the Traffic mobility space are proud with the Government’s Atma Nirbhar Bharat and ‘Make in India’ initiatives, they are also concerned about the large volume of high-end technology products from other countries flooding the Indian Market and getting sold as Indian brand, writes Prasad Srinivasan, Director, Business Development, Steradian Semiconductors Private Limited.

The biggest deception in this process is that, there are a few small Indian companies claiming that their products are indigenous but are Chinese / Korean or a Russian company who have entered the Indian Market in the garb of small indigenous Indian company.

Certification for safety, environment, accuracy etc. is extremely important and should be from standard European labs (Metas) or from Indian (ARAI) labs. But it has been seen that the certifications are from your ‘friendly’ neighbouring lab, which is ‘giving’ the important Quality / Safety / Accuracy certifications which underscores the product quality and safety for safety critical ITMS / VASD / ATMS solutions.

This practice often misguides the buyers who are unaware of the real origin of the product or the real quality and are paying for a ‘not’ so reliable product. As per Volza’s Global Import data (updated August 2023), IP cameras shipments from China stood at 64.3K, imported by 3,533 World importers from 2,391 China suppliers. The top three importers of IP Cameras are India with 38,142 shipments followed by Vietnam with 18,764 and the United States at the third spot with 9,411 shipments.

Similarly, if you look at Radar Spares (covering all types of verticals and applications), we have the following data as per Volza’s Global import data. Radar spare export shipments from China stood at 366, exported by 105 China Exporters to 84 Buyers. China exports most of its Radar spares to India, United States and Philippines. The top three exporters of Radar spare are United States with 3,446 shipments followed by India with 1,932 and Singapore at the 3rd spot with 861 shipments.

All this would impact our safety and quality standards. Let’s encourage real indigenous product companies from India, who have put in the required hard work and maintained the quality, safety and certification standards.