Mumbai all set for `Make in India’ show

Mumbai, India's commercial capital, is all geared for the `Make in India Week', a flagship event to provide greater momentum to local manufacturing initiative, to showcase the country's manufacturing prowess and to promote India as preferred manufacturing destination globally.

The week-long programme, beginning 14 February, would offer unprecedented access, insights and opportunities to connect and collaborate with India and global industry leaders, visionaries, academicians, central and state administrations.

The event aims at creating a confluence of policymakers, industry, entrepreneurs and academia to showcase, connect and collaborate, as well as highlight the people, policies and partnerships driving India's new manufacturing revolution, and take corporate and public participation to the next level.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has pitched the Make in India story to investors across the globe, will inaugurate the marquee event, which will host government delegation from 49 nations and business delegations from 68 countries during the week.

Speaking at the curtain raiser press conference, minister of state (independent charge) for commerce and industry, Nirmala Sitharaman, said, ''The government has incessantly pushed policy measures to boost manufacturing and today FDI in India is growing at 48 per cent while globally there is a sharp fall. The global business community has responded enthusiastically to Indian economy's revivalist fervour and `Make in India Week' will further showcase the nation's accomplishments in manufacturing and position India as investment, innovation and manufacturing hub."

Drawing attention to the role of the centre and the states as partners in realising the nation's potential for achieving higher rates of growth and creating employment for masses, the minister said, "States have a significant role in building and sustaining a manufacturing revolution and in the spirit of co-operative as well as competitive federalism they will be the drivers of development and centre will play a catalytic role."

Emphasizing that the world has now started to recognise India as a trusted investment destination, chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, said "India is poised to be the next big manufacturing destination."

Some of the key government delegations would include prime minister-led delegations from Finland, Sweden and Lithuania and deputy prime minister-led delegation from Poland. High level government representatives are accompanied by large business delegations.

"In order to give further momentum to the initiative begun by the prime minister aimed at promoting India as a big investment destination and increasing its share in global foreign investment, Make in India Week will be the biggest such effort," secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India, Amitabh Kant stated while speaking on the occasion.

The `Make in India' centre, setup at MMRDA grounds in Mumbai to host the event would showcase exhibitions of the most innovative products and manufacturing processes across 11 sectors. The centre would include sector specific pavilions showcasing all 11 focus sectors, 17 state exhibitions and several country pavilions. The exhibition area would cover 2,20,000 sq m and accommodates 27 halls.

Country pavilion would include exhibitions from Sweden, Germany and South Korea. Over 190 exhibitors would showcase manufacturing prowess of the country across focus sectors.

The week would also serve as a crucible of ideas and innovation with industry-academia interaction featuring manufacturing success stories. The prime minister would inaugurate an exhibition on innovation - the best of IIT - at the Make in India centre. Leading Institutions from the world over would come together and showcase solutions to address problems in three important areas - water, transportation and energy.

As a celebration of the entrepreneurship spirit of India's youth and to catalyse start up community to drive the entire value chain from innovation to manufacturing in India, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion and Qualcomm India would organize India's largest start-up contest ''QPrize™ Make in India'' awarding Rs2 crore in equity investment as prize money for the winning company.

As a forum on rethinking contemporary design practices against the backdrop of manufacturing and promoting India as a global centre of design, a conference on empowering through design would be organised to bring together global design thought leaders

Key opportunities in sectors like auto, defence and aerospace, food processing, chemicals and petrochemicals, electronics and information technology, pharmaceuticals, textiles, industrial equipment manufacturing, construction equipment, and infrastructure will be showcased through 21 seminars conceptualised and led by the key central ministries.

Seminars will showcase investment opportunities in each sector, recent policy initiatives for attracting investments and ease of doing business. Twelve state investor summits (Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Punjab, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamilnadu) will be held showcasing key sectoral strengths with reference to investment opportunities, steps undertaken by the state governments to improve business environment, locational advantages, and industrial infrastructure availability.

In addition to the seminars, the highlights of week include events such as CNN Asia Business Forum, Time India Awards, Driving Innovation: Hackathon, Make in India: The way forward, Conference on Empowering through Design, The Global Design and Innovation session and Champions for Societal Manufacturing.

The Make in India Week will help forging enormous global engagement with Indian industry in the form of partnerships and investments paving the path for a transformation of the world's largest democracy into the world's most powerful economy.