Salcomp to buy Nokia's Chennai unit for Rs 215 crore: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday said Finland-based Salcomp, one of Apple’s major suppliers, agreed to buy Nokia’s Chennai plant for around $30 million (Rs 215 crore).

The unit will be re-opened nearly six years after Nokia’s plant shut down due to a tax dispute. The factory has been shut since 2014 after a dispute between the Finnish mobile handset maker and tax authorities. Salcomp is expected to begin operations at the plant by next year, and is likely to invest around $300 million over the next five years.

Nearly 10,000 people are likely to get jobs once the factory goes full steam, Prasad said.

The factory was shut in 2014 and around 15,000 direct employees lost their jobs. Earlier, HTC, Foxconn, and Essar had evinced interest in the unit but did not pursue the matter.

The Nokia manufacturing facility, which employed over 30,000 employees directly and indirectly, was closed by the income tax department following a Rs 210-billion income tax dispute.

Following this, the Finnish company, which sold the mobile handset business to Microsoft, suspended operations at the unit in November 2014. After the Nokia unit was shut, almost all the ancilliary companies, including Foxconn, stopped operations in the SEZ.

Microsoft had acquired Nokia’s global devices and services business, including assets in India, for $7.2 billion in April 2015; however, due to the tax dispute, it had to take the facility off its plans.

Last April, Nokia resolved the tax dispute with the central government by settling $241.4 million towards IT department tax claim.

Nokia’s deal with the tax authorities paved the way for clearing the sale of its factory to Finland-based Salcomp.

Salcomp has, in fact, been present in India with a facility in Chennai for several years now. The company was supplying to Nokia phones when its manufacturing facility in Sriperumbudur was up and running. But when the Nokia facility shut down a few years ago, Salcomp maintained production at its own unit and also started manufacturing at two more plants in India.

During his last visit, Salcomp’s president and chief executive officer Markku Hangasjärvi told Business Standard that India accounts for 15-20 per cent of the company’s total sales, and he certainly expected to raise that to about 20-25 per cent by 2020.

The company invested over Rs 200 crore in India during the past few years and plans are to at least double that amount by 2020.

Ensure protection of user privacy, prevent abuse: IT Minister to tech firms

Technology firms must protect user privacy and prevent abuse of their platforms, Union IT minister said on Thursday, speaking as the government draws up a data privacy law and seeks to push companies to store more data locally.

Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said he wanted Indians to have access to more technology platforms but said this should not undermine user privacy.

"I have only one caveat - it must be safe and secure, it must safeguard the privacy rights of the individual and you must make extra efforts that people don't abuse the system," Prasad told industry executives at a gathering organised by Alphabet Inc's Google in New Delhi.

India's 1.3 billion people and their massive consumption of mobile data has turned it into a key growth market for US technology giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.

India has already forced foreign payment firms such as Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc to store data locally.

Technology firms have been concerned that the government's drive to step-up measures to boost local data storage will increase investment costs.

Google said at the event that it had launched a new job-search feature on its Google Pay platform, which is used by 67 million people in a month and competes with SoftBank -backed Paytm and Walmart Inc's PhonePe.

Google also expanded its artificial intelligence-based voice assistant service to feature phones by partnering with one of India's top telecom carriers in a country where more than 300 million use 2G devices.

Ravi Shankar Prasad asks Apple, Samsung to help us become e-export hub

IPhone maker Apple and South Korean electronics giant Samsung should work with Indian companies to ensure this country becomes a hub of export for electronics, said Ravi Shankar Prasad, minister for this sector and for information technology.

He suggested Apple expand its manufacturing base in India and use the country as an export hub.

At a long meeting with top executives from the industry, Prasad heard them on various issues and said his ministry and NITI Aayog would in the next two to three months work with them on incentives for the sector.

"Apple has started manufacturing phones in India, including components and...have started making iPhones for export...But, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I want a robust presence of Apple in India, a super-robust presence of Samsung in India, and other global companies," he said.

According to Apple, eight of its global suppliers have set up units in India. These being Sunwoda Electronic, Winstron Corporation, CCL Design (Suzhou) Co, Flex, Foxconn, Salcomp and Shenzhen YUTO Packaging Technology. Currently, Apple manufactures iPhones 6S and 7 from India.

Among companies represented at the meeting were Vivo, Oppo, Qualcomm, Xiaomi, Dell, HP, Bosch, Cisco, Flextronics, Foxconn, Nokia, LG, Panasonic, Intel, Wistron and Sterlite Technologies. The electronics industry body, Manufacturers Association of Information Technology was also present. It recommended production-linked export incentives, leveraging India’s geo-political influence and free trade agreement influence with countries to accept Indian standards as sufficient to access other markets. Also, identification of sub-sectors where India should lead the development of standards, such as 5G, medical electronics, cyber security and data communications.

The National Policy on Electronics, approved by the Union cabinet in February, asks for provision of an "attractive package of incentives for promoting export of electronics goods, thereby empowering the exporters by facilitating global market access".

The policy aims to achieve annual turnover of $400 billion by 2025 and to generate 10 million additional jobs. The government has said earlier that manufacturing of mobile handsets would be a focus area, with a target of a billion a year by 2025, valued at $190 bn, including 600 mn handsets for export.

The government also plans to boost component production, to curb growing import from Asian countries such as China, Vietnam and Taiwan. A Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP) had been introduced in 2016-17.