India needs to move beyond services, turn into a 'product nation': Vaishnaw

Vaishnaw also announced a major upgrade for Pune railway station, citing the city's historical and industrial importance.

India must move beyond its dominance in IT services and focus on becoming a global product powerhouse, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, stressing the need for indigenous innovation in both software and hardware.

Vaishnaw made it clear that while India’s services industry will continue to grow, the next big leap must come from product development. “We have been a great service country, now we need to become a product nation. An industry that must continue to grow, but simultaneously we must now also become a product nation.”

He laid out the broader vision, stating, “This journey will involve software products as well as hardware products, both categories. And within hardware, analog products and digital networks.”

Innovation, he said, must extend beyond government institutions and involve a much wider ecosystem.“Where only certain government institutions would be developing the technologies, everything has to now give way to a new mindset, where academia, startups, students, and researchers all join together to create new solutions,”the minister said while felicitating winners of the Indian Web Browser Development Challenge (IWBDC) and Chips to Start Up (C2S) Programme event organised by MeitY. He emphasised that talent from across the country must contribute. “…what’s more important is that participation (of startups and innovators) is coming not just from premier institutions, but also from a large number of institutions in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.”

Building India’s chip ecosystem
Vaishnaw underscored the importance of developing India’s own semiconductor ecosystem step by step. “A tech stack will take a few years to build, but every step we take must ensure we reach that level.”

He cited the BLDC (Brushless DC) chip controller as an example of India’s growing capability.
“BLDCs today have become a very important part of electric vehicles, electrical appliances, and many mid-sized devices. If you look at the entire spectrum of chips we need to develop, some will be small-value but large-volume, some mid-value with mid-volume, and some high-value but low-volume. We have to play across the entire spectrum.”

India’s bet on RISC-V

Explaining the government’s focus on RISC-V, an open-source chip design platform, Vaishnaw said, “We decided to move forward more on RISC-V because that’s the real open-source chip design platform. It can be used for designing CPUs, GPUs, and can be taken forward as a sustainable product coming out of our country.”

Pitch for indigenous web browser

Adding to this, S. Krishnan, Secretary, MeitY, stressed the need for India to build its own semiconductor ecosystem and reduce dependence on global supply chains. “We should have started this process years ago, but that acceleration is finally happening now. In the next two to three years, we must see real progress toward having a full-fledged chip designed and developed within India.”

On the need for a secure digital infrastructure, Krishnan highlighted the importance of building India’s own web ecosystem, stating: “The Internet was never designed as a planned, structured infrastructure. It evolved over time in bits and pieces. But today, it is critical infrastructure, and we need to ensure it is resilient and secure, particularly in financial transactions and other key digital interactions.”

“The question is not why we need an Indian web browser 30 years after the first ones were built, but why we don’t already have one that ensures security, resilience, and reliability for Indian users,” he added.