In a leg up to the Centre's Make in India' programme to build an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat', the global tech giant Amazon has announced to start the manufacturing of Amazon Devices, including Fire TV sticks, in partnership with Foxconn's subsidiary, Cloud Network Technology in Chennai later this year.
While announcing the latest plan by the tech giant, Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted that under the leadership of PM @narendramodi, electronics manufacturing in India has recently attracted some of the biggest investments from global giants. Happy to share @amazonIN is the latest to join this success story of India.
“Held a very good conversation with @AmitAgarwal and @Chetankrishna of @amazonIN today. Delighted to share that soon Amazon will commence manufacturing of electronics products like FireTV stick in India,” Ravi Shankar Prasad tweeted.
Held a very good conversation with @AmitAgarwal and @Chetankrishna of @amazonIN today. Delighted to share that soon Amazon will commence manufacturing of electronics products like FireTV stick in India. pic.twitter.com/BRpnUG6fA5
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) February 16, 2021
“The device manufacturing programme will be able to produce hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Stick devices (for video streaming) every year, catering to the demands of customers in India,” Amazon said in a blog post. Amazon also stated that it will continuously evaluate scaling capacity to additional marketplaces/cities depending on the domestic demand.
According to the IT minister, Amazon's decision to set up a manufacturing line in Chennai is a welcome move, and it will enhance domestic production capacities and create jobs as well. “This will further our mission of creating a Atmanirbhar Bharat which is digitally empowered,” Prasad said.
The Union Minister further asserted that India is an attractive investment destination and is poised to become a major player in the global supply chain in the electronics and IT products industry. “Our government's decision to launch a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme has received tremendous response globally,” Prasad said.
The minister also put out a series of tweets about the virtual discussion and said he had asked Amazon India to help in taking products made by Indian artisans and Ayurvedic products to global markets through its platform. He also urged the e-commerce major to also select a few villages in India and develop them as fully digital villages.
In its blogpost, Amazon earlier said that its manufacturing efforts will commence with contract manufacturer Cloud Network Technology, a subsidiary of Foxconn, in Chennai and start production later this year.
Amazon committed an investment of $1 billion to digitise 10 million small and medium businesses, enabling $10 billion in cumulative exports, and creating an additional one million jobs by 2025.
“Amazon is committed to partner with the Indian government to advance the vision of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat… Today, we are delighted to announce Amazon's first manufacturing line in India to produce hundreds of thousands of Fire TV Stick devices every year catering to the demands of the Indian customers,” Agarwal said.
