"We will soon start Electronics Development Fund (EDF) which I hope will very soon have a corpus of Rs 10,000 crore. It will be used to encourage innovation and support entrepreneurship," Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) Secretary J S Deepak said while speaking at the launch of Qualcomm's Design in India initiative.
He said the fund, housed with Canbank Venture Capital Fund, will start this month with an initial corpus of Rs 2,500 crore and rest will be raised from various sources.
"We need to change present system of electronics manufacturing. It has to be rich in domestic Intellectual Property Rights," Deepak said.
At the event, Qualcomm announced USD 4 lakh corpus for development of electronic products by Indian entrepreneurs under its 'Design in India' programme in association with IT industry body Nasscom.
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"The company creating a product under the Design in India programme will own IPR for it. We only want to boost ecosystem for electronics design and commercialisation of innovative products," Qualcomm India President Sunil Lalvani said.
It will shortlist 10 entities which will be eligible for funding of USD 10,000 each to start prototyping their product idea at Qualcomm's lab in Bengaluru. Thereafter, it will select three best products and give them funding of USD 100,000 each.
"India has strength in IT and that strength also includes design, engineering and R&D.
"Engineering export from India was around USD 18.1 billion in 2014-15. This is the fastest-growing segment within IT industry. This is expected to reach USD 40 billion by 2020. Design is something that you do before developing product. IT is not delinked from manufacturing," Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said.
"The centre is coming up in Bengaluru with initial cost of Rs 25 crore to incubate ideas around IoT and encourage domestic entrepreneurship," Chandrashekhar said.