Electronic CFC come up in Vellore, will focus on enhancing skill development and entrepreneurship

Vellore (Tamil Nadu) : The Southern India Electronic Industries Chamber (SIEIC) has brought together 15 Electronic System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) companies to establish an Electronic Common Facility Centre (CFC) in Vellore district through the Union Ministry of Electronics.

SIEIC, which has more than 35 companies as members, has pooled in the 15 companies situated in places such as Vellore, Chennai and Bengaluru to set up the CFC, S. Nagarajan, president of SIEIC said.

“We will be establishing the Electronic CFC at an outlay of Rs. 40 crore in two phases. In phase one, the focus of the centre will be on skill development, specifically targeted at developing electronics hardware manufacturing skill, research and development to promote electronic hardware manufacturing and an innovation centre to deal with engineering and design,” he said.

In phase 2, the focus would be on establishing advanced electroplating for electronic industries, he added.

“The electronics market is growing. Such an Electronic CFC in a tier-II city like Vellore will enhance electronic-related manufacturing activities surrounding the region and attract new investments towards the electronic sector in this region. Industries will benefit a lot as they can develop prototypes with the help of the CFC,” Mr. Nagarajan said.

He added that the CFC would help in accelerating entrepreneurship and promote supplier companies. Vellore was identified as a Brownfield Electronic Manufacturing Cluster by the Union Ministry in 2014.

“Under this, there are various schemes that benefit individual companies and group of companies. CFC is one such scheme under the National Policy of Electronics that is for the benefit of a group of companies. The Ministry provides 75 per cent as grant for the project for a minimum of seven companies,” he said.

SIEIC has joined hands with the Confederation of Indian Industry to take this proposal ahead to the State government. “We are looking for grants from the Government of Tamil Nadu. We are planning to approach the government through CII. We are also looking out for land for the CFC,” he added. A discussion on this aspect was held at VIT University recently.

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