Industry 4.0 attracts German companies to India

Industry 4.0 opens up immense opportunities for the Indian IT sector. Presence of skilled labour force in India, its strong expertise in the IT field and India's present thrust on the manufacturing growth through initiatives like Make in India' and Digital India' have created potential for India becoming the next digital factory of world. This has created pathways for more and more German companies looking towards India for technology collaboration and R&D in the area of Industry 4.0 and Internet of things. There is need to further develop ecosystems for Industry 4.0 and Internet of things in India to attract German Mittelstand into manufacturing sector into India. These were the key takeaways from the first meeting of the Indian Professional Forum (IPF) organized by the Embassy of India in Berlin on 5 August 2016, on the subject of Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT): Synergies for Indo-German Partnership.

Participating at the event, members and experts from Indian professional community in Germany discussed upon how to improve engagements between India and Germany in this field. Mr. Onkar Ambekar, a senior IoT expert stated that the number of IoT based manufacturing devices are expected to reach 1 billion mark globally by 2020, which would translate into annual manufacturing IoT investment reaching 70 billion USD. To have greater share of this IoT space, ecosystem for Industry 4.0 should be developed in India fastly. Members of IPF recommended that the Make in India' programme needs to have greater focus on skills & technology development, R&D collaboration with Germany to adequately capture the growing IoT & Industry 4.0 global market.

Speaking at the occasion, Ambassador Gurjit Singh urged the Indian professionals to use such dialogue mechanism like IPF and deliberate on how it could be used to promote greater investments by German Mittelstand into India in crucial fields like Industry 4.0, IoT and similar key innovative areas.

Indian Professional Forum (IPF) was launched early this year by the Embassy of India, Berlin to leverage the presence of Indian professionals in Germany to further improve the image of India, promote important national initiative of the Indian government and to create a mechanism for regular dialogue on thematic issues.

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