As a bid to cultivate digitalization throughout the country, India is currently verifying its policies for the mobile manufacturing sector. In order to encourage the local manufacturers in making affordable smartphones within India, the government has urged the domestic companies to look into the idea. The notification didn’t state any particular details of quality standards.

So one can assume the texture and parts of the mobile as similar as plastic or degraded materials and the processors and battery may not be perfect.

Soon after hearing the GOI’s urge, two domestic companies- Karbonn and Micromax gave a promising response, which however included few drawbacks.

The companies mentioned that they’re capable of producing smartphones at such a low price but the output depends on variables such as the size of the order and the government’s advocacy to push the products. The newly introduced 20-year plan, NITI Aayog spoke about the astonishing price dropdowns in a meeting with the former two companies along with Lava and Intex.

Meanwhile, Pradeep Jain, MD of Karbonn Mobiles said:

“We will be in a position to come out with a prototype of the low-budget product in a month’s time. But the government needs to clarify some key issues, including the support it will lend to the project.”

The solitary idea behind this step is to push the country towards the cashless economy. Though large parts of the country have already started doing so, multiple villages still don’t have any idea of what digitisation is!

Nidhi Markanday, Director at Intex, said:

“The company is already selling smartphones priced at Rs 2,000, but these are devices that run on 2G networks. As the reach of 3G and 4G networks increases, and depending on demand and support extended by the government, we are ready to manufacture phones that are compatible with them.”

“We have the capacity to make a 4G phone at Rs 2,000. But, it depends on the scale of the order and how fast 3G and 4G networks penetrate rural markets,” Markanday added.

Currently, many local smartphone companies such as Intex has their 3G devices pricing between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000, meanwhile 4G phone costs between Rs 4,000 and Rs 10,000.

On the other side, the president of Indian Cellular Association, Pankaj Mohindroo stated that the government should play its role by ensuring the norms and taxes in order to encourage the companies.

Pankaj said:

“We will not be able to bring substantially higher product experience through cost reductions. I think these things should be left better with market forces. You need to facilitate a regime of lower taxes, such as zero VAT on phones priced under Rs 5,000.”

And, the telecom regulatory of India, TRAI has already passed a notice stating the grant of 100MB data per month at the free of cost. The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) is funding this scheme as per the reports from the government.