Nothing CEO Says India Poised to Produce Global Consumer Electronics Champions
New Delhi — India is on track to produce global consumer electronics companies of its own, Nothing CEO Carl Pei said Monday, citing the country’s large smartphone market, young population, manufacturing base and growing need for homegrown research and development.
Pei said countries that built consumer electronics industries at scale, including Japan, South Korea and China, eventually produced major global brands.
He said India is approaching a similar turning point, noting that the country is already the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer and has a large youth population and deep pool of software talent.
According to Pei, the missing piece is not manufacturing capacity but the ability to develop and continuously improve products through in-house research and development.
He said strong R&D capabilities distinguish companies that can sustain long-term growth from those that rely heavily on products developed by manufacturing partners.
“India will produce global consumer electronics companies. The only question is when, and that depends on who builds them,” Pei said.
Pei said Nothing plans to contribute to that process by spinning out its CMF brand into a standalone Indian company. The new business will be majority Indian-owned and headquartered in India, with its own team and R&D capabilities in the country.
Nothing will remain a shareholder and partner in the company.
Pei said his eight years in China gave him a firsthand view of how a manufacturing ecosystem can develop into a global consumer electronics powerhouse.
That experience shaped his belief that India can follow a similar path if companies invest in engineering and product development rather than concentrating only on assembly, he said.
Reflecting on India’s smartphone market in 2015, Pei said domestic brands accounted for nearly half of smartphone sales at the time, with one Indian brand briefly overtaking Samsung to become the country’s best-selling smartphone brand.
He said the next opportunity for Indian companies will depend on their ability to develop products themselves.
“Manufacturing is step one. Step two is R&D,” Pei said, adding that India already has much of the industrial foundation needed to take the next step. (Source: IANS)
