Ajai Chowdhry, one of the six founders of the HCL group, has been lobbying the government to refocus on hardware and electronics rather than just promoting software exports. He became president and chief executive of hardware and services company HCL Infosystems Ltd in 1994 and has been its chairman since 1999. Chowdhry is part of many government panels, including the information technology hardware task force set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the committee to draft the 11th Five-Year Plan for electronics hardware in India, and India Design Council—a group established by the government to constitute the National Design Policy. He is also chairman of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad. In an interview, he talks about the synergy in these multiple roles and his vision for an electronics ecosystem. Edited excerpts:
What is the status of the IT hardware task force’s recommendations?
The task force was set up in 2009 and there were around 165 recommendations aimed at changing the electronic design and manufacturing environment in the country. We worked with the government to put together five big recommendations.