Samsung’s commitment to the Indian market is evident from the fact that it’s the largest selling smartphone brand in the country. And the Friday’s meeting between PM Modi and the Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. showed some signs of further steps in this regard.
Samsung sees India as production base and R&D hub
The company has proven to be India’s important strategic partner in the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. The VC conveyed to the Honorable Prime Minister that Samsung sees India as an important production base and an R&D hub.
Clearly, the company’s goal is to turn into a local name instead of being just a foreign investor. The South Korean has been a pioneer in daily use technology and has set several industrial benchmarks. Smartphone manufacturing and selling lie at the heart of the group and India is one of its best markets. Cheap labor and abundance of human resources have always attracted foreign companies to set up shop in India. However, for Samsung, that is not a problem considering it has an extremely effective production, assembly, and global distribution chain.
The idea behind setting up a bigger shop in the country is to keep tapping into an ever-growing market and industry.
Samsung plans local innovation
Creating local innovation is the next step towards making an impact in the fastest growing nation. Besides direct technology, Samsung’s ‘Smart Class’ program aimed at providing education to underprivileged children, has been providing e-learning services to 200,000 students at 376 Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schools across the country. Apart from this, 18 Samsung Technical Schools provide technical skill development skills to the youth, to increase their employability.
The ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ initiatives in India have attracted many foreign companies with its openness in nature.
What others have done?
Recently smartphone manufacturing giants, Foxconn committed to a $5 billion investment for setting up manufacturing unit/’s in India. E-commerce giant Amazon has similar plans, with Jeff Bezos promising to ramp up their investment portfolio in the country by an additional $3 billion. App-based aggregator Uber’s interests in India is no secret to the layman’s eyes across the country. With one eye at R&D, production and sale in India and the other at exports, Samsung has committed to a massive investment in India and should it do as planned, it could go a long way in helping the PM’s current plans with the infrastructure.
