| |MARCH 202119T he recently announced Union Budget was a crucial one. It was the first time in decades where a budget was announced in the backdrop of an economy that has contracted without precedent. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) further anticipates that India's GDP should shrink by around 8 percent, per International Monetary Fund (IMF) gauges. It is imperative to now focus on bring-ing the economy back on track. With borders shutting down for close to a year, the sup-ply chain was massively impacted. And while this posed several challenges, it also opened a tremendous opportuni-ty ­ to create a self-reliant nation that can cater to domes-tic needs as well as export to make the economy bounce back. Historically though, India has always seen success in assembling products, rather than manufacturing some-thing completely from scratch. A shift in this mindset is a long term journey, but will positively yield results over the years. I see the tremendous opportunity that is there in manu-facturing within the country for domestic and internation-al consumption. And while the government has announced a slew of measures to spur job creation in the manufactur-ing sector, it is imperative more than ever before that we make the `Make in India' story work, to enable the `Make for the World.'From a manufacturing perspective, our government is going in the right direction, however a little extra push can accelerate economic growth. · The Covid-19 crisis created a massive demand sup-ply gap, and the only way to ensure that this is not a business challenge in future is to become self-reliant. Consumer electronics, healthcare, and durables are in-dustries where there is a significant opportunity in the domestic consumption narrative as well. The declaration in the budget to bring 13 areas with an expense of Rs 1.97 CREATE A MANUFACTURING DRIVEN ECOSYSTEM TO ACCELERATE ECONOMIC GROWTHBy Jubin Peter, Co-Founder & Chairman, Qthree Ventures Private LimitedThought CentralJubin Peter,Co-Founder & Chairman
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