New Delhi According to industry stakeholders, India needs to formalize the domestic market for third party repair and refurbishment of electronic items to capture the $20 billion business opportunity amid rising demand for refurbished gadgets.
Ajay Choudhary, founder of tech services firm HCL and president of the Electronic Products Innovation Consortium (EPIC) Foundation, said the market for electronics refurbishing and repair services is growing. “The refurbishment market just for smartphones is estimated to be worth $10 billion per year,” he said, adding that together, the electronics repair market could account for $20 billion.
Choudhary said that initial steps are being taken to formalize the repair industry, which includes the acquisition of Yantra, a renovation and repair services startup from Flipkart in January this year. While examples are still limited, services such as OnSight-Go and Urban Company have started offering at-home repair services for smartphones, laptops and other common gadgets. Onsite-Go, In fact, also offers Annual Maintenance Contracts (AMCs) to service and repair consumer gadgets.
Industry body Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (Mait) on September 7 informed IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav about the benefits of these services. Nitin Kunkolinkar, Honorary President of MAT, said that for the development of such services, it may be important to encourage local manufacturing of components.
“One of the key aspects of boosting a home repair services economy is ensuring that components are being sourced locally, which has not happened on a large scale until now. India has a strong supply chain that caters to a variety of industries, which can diversify to procure and manufacture components critical to the growth of the local repair economy.”
Meanwhile, Nitin Gupta, chief executive of electronic waste recycling firm Atero India, said the company has seen a clear increase in the amount of e-waste that it collects and recycles every year, although the benefits of these actions have not been passed on to the companies. India so far.
catch all technology news And updates on Live Mint. download mint news app to receive daily market update & Live business News,