Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan

India’s shift towards a manufacturing destination

In this episode of The Indian Express tech podcast – Our Own Devices, host Nandagopal Rajan, COO, The Indian Express Online is joined by Josh Foulger, President, Consumer Electronics, Zetwerk. Josh shares his experience in manufacturing and what makes India a perfect destination for the same. He talks about the challenges that were faced by the supply chains post Covid and how it impacted the overall manufacturing industry. He also talks about the government’s support and push towards making India a more and more suitable manufacturing destination. To understand how Zetwerk helps its customers in manufacturing and how things changed over time, tune into today's episode of Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan.

What does Zetwerk do? 00:37
What is a Manage Marketplace 01:52
Services by Zetwerk 03:11
Indian as a destination for manufacturing 04:46
Whats missing in the chain? 07:44
A new normal post covid 09:52
How manufacturing changed over time 11:49

Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

Duration:: 16m
Broadcast on:: 08 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. Maybe you can save too. With Medicare's Extra Help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or married couples who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out. Go to ssa.gov/extrahelp. Paid for by the US Department of Health and Human Services. Hello and welcome to another episode of our own devices. We're going to talk about something we haven't really touched upon so far. At least not this season and we have maybe a little bit of diet in the early seasons. It's about manufacturing and India is in this almost entering a manufacturing superhigh way where the potentials are endless and we need to see where we end up in the end. To talk about it, we have with us Josh Paulger, who is the President of Consumer Electronics at Z-Work. So Josh, welcome to the show. Thank you Nandu. Thank you for having me over. So if I can start by asking you to explain to our listeners what exactly does Z-Work do? And I guess you guys called yourself a managed marketplace, could you explain that concept also? Sure Nandu. I think manufacturing is something which is very close to my heart for the last 30 plus years. So I'm happy to say that Z-Work is actually Z-Work manufacturing is a basis of this company just formed six years ago. And so Z-Work is basically three main divisions or three verticals. One is the industrials where there's a huge emphasis on renewables, there is aerospace and difference and then there is electronics. And all of these things are home towards solving customer problems both in India and export markets. And I should say that the managed marketplace also serves as a great platform which I think is sort of under all of these manufacturing assets to support and enable SMEs, MSMEs to find the right buyers. And in the electronics vertical, what the team has been able to do and will do going forward is creating manufacturing assets in India, pan India at this point in time to enable support customers across the ESDM value chain. And this concept of a managed marketplace, how do you explain that to the common man? So I think the managed marketplace is kind of like a buyer seller meeting place where a lot of small companies may be having the right capability but may not be geographically connected. And there may be a lot of customers who may be geographically located in India even though India is a very large country or it could be internationally. And the key is to connect these buyer sellers. And now what we are seeing as a zet work is having manufacturing factories around India for instance in electronics, we are able to use a lot of these suppliers who are very capable and otherwise would have been a silent voice into our customer value chains. And so I think that is going to be the power of us, I use the word everybody says raise the roof. I think when you raise the roof you need to raise the floor along with yourself. And I think that's what's going to strengthen the ecosystem building the overall competitiveness but also bringing the whole supply chain tier one, tier two, tier three's along the journey of being world-class, serving customers who are Indian value chains and global value chains. So if in a hypothetical situation, a new Indian startup wants to bring a consumer electronic product to the market, they can come to you and do you give them an end-to-end production facility or are there things that they would have to maybe get from somewhere else? I think there are various interventions we could explore with them but I think I can explain to you what we currently do at least in electronics is in Bangalore. We have what we call a prototype line where we can do at least the motherboard builds. This has been servicing. I think we really don't say customers there but we just operate them but we have like 250 different people using them every month. And our dedicated team which focuses on this helps these smaller company startups, people who need sort of small runs with some feedback, we run the product through the line, we're able to do this. So this is I think at the base level something we do where there is you, we're kind of like a make-out lab inside actually a full running factory. Now we also support them with some design for manufacturing feedback, is this product manufacturable and whatnot. Now the advantage for a startup would be that they come into our make-out line and they run their product through, they get the feedback. They say that they are successful in the market, they are able to come to us and say, "Hey, Josh, are we able to use your facilities to scale up to this?" And then yes, we said we do and we have facilities like I said, Pan India depending on the geographical advantage for their particular product, we're able to offer them that solution. So over the past few years we've had this buzz about manufacturing coming to India. The company is leaving China and looking at India's next big destination to move to. So how do you look at manufacturing in India and India as a destination manufacturing and in the past few years have you seen things improve, has the ecosystem sort of come into place? We were always talking about the ecosystem, the ecosystem is not there, you can build things but you still have to bring in a lot of things from China, are you seeing a change in all of that? Nothing. You know, first I have to say that India has manufacturing competence, India has manufacturing skill that people are very talented and that's been my experience since I, I think it was my third year break in engineering. You know, I took an internship in one of the prominent companies in India rather in Chennai. The kind of processes, process controls I saw and this was with the risk of dating myself. This year was in 1990 and the kind of process controls which were there in place were just incredible and what got me to robotics to go and specialize in my masters was I saw plasma coating robot there and so robotics automation heavy process controls was already there in place. Now what I've seen though is the last 10 years under the make in India policy framework, we've had a lot of encouragement coming from the government. And also the different state governments have been very, very encouraging and supportive of this environment. So I see clearly a tremendous progress in the last 10 years in the SDM, especially under this framework, a very consistent capability building. And so I'm very happy to report that not just the manufacturing of end products, but also sub assemblies are in place and very happy to say that zet work already does them in our factories, components of course are, you know, we work closely with our customers using the customers approved vendor list ABL as we say, and our own qualified supply base. This is the marketplace we tap into to say that, you know, we have a customer who has a problem and we're able to do this. So we are getting there. The export numbers are looking good as well, which tells that we are globally competitive. The current production base in India is about 100 billion for the SDM. The market size is about 140, 150 billion. This is said to grow, you know, I think the manufacturing, we believe that it should grow 5x by the end of the decade, 500 billion would be the number or the dramatic. And I think India is just, I will say that a lot of people don't realize that we've not really tapped out India, it's, we just warming up this industry, I say only employs 2 million people currently. I very easily anticipate about 10 million people being employed by end of the decade. So along with that, I think we will, in a way, as I say, raise the floor and be globally competitive. Is there any part of this digital facility that you think is missing right now and is maybe going to take up a couple more years maybe to come into place? Now when you look at the full value chain in electronics, and then this is sort of a representative value chain for all, I'll say hardware products, mechanical or even electronic products. I think the full value chain has, you know, sort of a brand at the top who really understands the markets, the consumer segments, they are sort of supporting, and then they either have in-house designer outside design, then comes a tier one manufacturer, tier two, tier three manufacturers, and then comes equipment players. Now what India has at least in electronics hardware is we have, I'll say 30, 40 years of experience in design, of certain attributes, semiconductor design is done in India. Software systems are designed in India, and these are all capital entities. Now they call it GCCs, right, global competent centers, and a lot of American manufacturers are there around India, and there are factories here at tier one, tier two levels, right? I think what is missing today is the thread connecting all of them together, because this is a full spectrum of skills, which is needed, and if all of these skills are aligned, India becomes a full stack player, right from design to tier one, tier two manufacturing, and building machines, which are capable of that. Now that I think is the connecting lines, and I see as India is going on this, which is about a journey for 2047, I see these things getting connected. Government is very keen in striving, the enterprises are responding, enterprises like us, who come from a very different vantage point. I'd like to tell that, you know, ZetWork is probably a product of the Indian government policies. We start up India, digital India, make an India. So we are enabling connecting all of these individual boxes, so that India can become full service, full stack solution provider for both Indian value chains and global value chains. So a couple of years back when we were in the middle of this COVID, and lockdown and all of that, you know, often there was discussion about how the entire supply chain itself was just choked. It was not what it used to be. Are we back to normal now? And given your experience, is it new normal to what you would have seen pre-COVID? I think definitely see globally, supply chains are always dynamic. Now COVID, what a new dimension to the dynamic, you know, so where we had lockdowns in various parts of the world, and that sort of set that balance of this supply chain. Now I think it's immediately after COVID, you had a big spike in demand in certain categories, which I think draw up things. Now, you know, being in this sort of space for nearly 30 years and being a robotics before that, technology, innovations, technology use cases are normal, and geopolitical tensions were not, but now it's the new normal. And I think it calls just for a new brand of supply chain leadership, which is capable of managing that. So I was talking to some of our colleagues saying that, you know, in the industry, we try to lead and maneuver and support our customers. We always look at SWOT as a sort of strength, weakness, opportunities and threats as a mechanism to quickly gauge how are we placed? And this is an exercise most companies do once a year and then forget about it, right? I have been advocating now that we need to do those, which is threats, opportunities, weaknesses and threats. So we really look at the external environment more, external threats, external opportunities, spend time on them and do this. And we may have to recalibrate every three months to see what other appropriate interventions need it. So I think if we do that, I think we are going to be able to take opportunities. We're going to find new creative ways to solve customer problems. As somebody who has seen this industry for a few decades now, are you seeing manufacturing change? And is there something that really excites you on how this change happened? You know, definitely very exciting. You know, I think it's exciting because now it's global, especially India was not considered even though I disagree. There's a manufacturing powerhouse and as you described, you know, we are on a highway and it is going to be long and winding. But I think what is exciting in manufacturing is we have a new workforce coming into play. We have in electronics, in my previous companies, we implemented near or 100% women in our workforce. So this is a great place. I've seen, you know, where women entering the workforce enriches the place. I think that's something which is very important. And I think which is something which we've been able to see us and the women succeed in what were their life goals were. The second, I think, is really the technology. People say industry 4.0, AI in the workplace. I've seen bits and pieces of this already when I was in my masters, having some level of intelligence in your manufacturing process so that you enable better process control and that's its artificial intelligence embedded in your automation. So I think that all these technologies, you know, bring in that this is exciting. The third last, you know, there are many more, but just to say, the third thing which I think is exciting for me is, is our ability to look at design for manufacturing. This has not been a big thought before. And a lot of people don't realize that design for manufacturing, which includes the best attachment technologies, the best testing methodologies using certain automation, let's say it's a laser welding, right, how do you design a product so that laser welding process can happen automatically, instead of relying necessarily on pure human intervention. So I think that design for manufacturing is also becoming important even in countries like India. You just don't throw sort of random things there. So there is a method in which we can build products, build processes and the product framework and the product structure is designed in this manner. And so I think these are incredible developments. All of that reduces resources, enables new workforce. People say efficiency, but yes, it's efficiency, but really be using people for what they're best known, this intelligence and it's all of these things are very, very exciting. You're very happy to see that India is the forefront of all of them. So Josh, thanks for being on the show. It is very insightful. And again, this is not a topic we have, we have really touched before. So I have this mission that every time somebody listens to our podcast, they should go back learning something new, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners have now opened up their minds to the potential of manufacturing in India. So thanks for being on the show. My pleasure, Nanda. And to the listeners, all the best in your manufacturing journey, this is a great space to be in. And I'm one of the many thousands of leaders who chosen this path, which I think is great and fantastic. All the best. So you are listening to our own devices. We'll be back again next week with another guest and not more insight. Till then, we are available everywhere you listen to your podcast. You will listen to our own devices with Nanda Gopal Rajan by the Indian Express. This week's episode was edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar and produced by Meen Harakananda. If you like the show, then do share it on your social media handles and do not forget to tag us. We go by Express Audio. You can find us on X and Instagram. And if you have any feedback, do write to us at podcasts@innonexpress.com, that's podcast with an S and do not forget to tune in next Monday at 4 p.m. for another episode of Our Own Devices. An official message from Medicare. A new law is helping me save more money on prescription drug costs. You may be able to save too. With Medicare's extra help program, my premium is zero and my out-of-pocket costs are low. Who should apply? Single people making less than $23,000 a year or a married couple who make less than $31,000 a year. Even if you don't think you qualify, it pays to find out.