India’s ESDM Sector Lacks End-to-End Product Design Capability: Zetwerk's Josh Foulger

India’s electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM) ecosystem is not ready yet for full product design despite having the required talent in the country, said Josh Foulger, president of Zetwerk's electronics division.

India currently holds 4% share of the $4 trillion ESDM space and there is enough room to grow, he said, acknowledging the country’s achievement in electronics manufacturing.

“We have started manufacturing, and there seems to be a sense of accomplishment there, which is great. I think we should have a micro-celebration and then move on,” he said while speaking at the Accel Advanced Manufacturing Summit 2025 –Delhi Edition on Thursday.

However, the former country head and MD of Bharat FIH said that the industry needs to fill the gaps to develop end-to-end product design capability, which is going to be a tough road.

 “We have GCCs with design service talent but the capability to take a product from design to integration and testing is lacking,” he said.

The talent exists in hardware, mechanical engineering services, and software but when it comes to full product design, building it out, integrating it, and testing all functionalities, we don’t have that capability today, he said.

On the manufacturing front, the government has recently launched the Rs 22,919 crore Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme to localize component manufacturing.

Foulger said Zetwerk is looking for backward integration and plans to manufacture electronic components under the scheme.

“The other end of the spectrum is getting into the design angle. This includes designing a full product, designing modules, achieving mastery in subsystems, and so on. It's easier said than done,” he said.

With a roadmap for Zetwerk in achieving design capability, he said the company ultimately aims to offer customers a white-label solution, which is plug-and-play.

“That is the ultimate stage—being able to provide a sophisticated white-label product ready to meet a particular use case. But there are ranges of design. Some are subsystems, and one of the approaches is joint R&D. You can do a joint R&D exercise with an OEM and gradually build this competency,” he said.