HP, Google to produce Chromebooks in India, Chandrasekhar says PLIs giving dividends
Oct 02, 2023
New Delhi [India], October 2 : As HP and Google have announced they will manufacture Chromebooks in India, Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said his government’s production-linked incentive has made the country a preferred destination for hardware manufacturing.
Chromebooks are laptops, detachables and tablets powered by the ChromeOS operating system.
“Good to see Google plan manufacturing their Chromebook devices in India. PM Narendra Modi ji's vision and PLI policies are fast making India a preferred partner in Electronics manufacturing and most recent IT Hardware PLI2.0 PLI will catalyze laptop and server manufacturing in India,” Chandrasekhar wrote on X, sharing a post of Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Pichai wrote on X that Google was partnering with HP to manufacture Chromebooks in India.
“These are the first Chromebooks to be made in India and will make it easier for Indian students to have access to affordable and secure computing,” Pichai wrote on X.
The government had announced a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme 2.0 for IT Hardware. It was notified on May 29, 2023, with a budgetary outlay of Rs 17,000 crore. The scheme is aimed at broadening and deepening the IT hardware manufacturing ecosystem in the country.
In early August, India announced it would put a restriction on imports of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, and ultra-small form factor computers and servers (IT devices) from November 1. Their imports would be then allowed against a valid licence.
The central government had maintained that the country has sufficient capacity for manufacturing IT hardware devices. Also, the government maintained that it had already announced production-linked incentives for manufacturing IT hardware in India which will ultimately result in further lowering of the prices of such hardware.
