Inadequate government support, lack of manufacturing facilities, scarce venture funding availability and a culture of conformity are discouraging innovation in embedded systems in India. As an ecosystem for manufacturing is not there in India, a company called Allgo designed a tablet computer targeting the domestic education market, but was forced to use a Chinese manufacturer.
Embedded design engineers working for multinational technology companies in India are anxious to shift their efforts to developing products for the local market.Accoeding to experts, Indian embedded market is expanding despite the relative lack of domestic expertise. The federal government has to do more, especially because the venture capital model has not worked in the country as far as embedded systems companies are concerned.
Medical devices are an example of a potentially large market for embedded solutions. A combination of new devices and embedded software could be used to reverse the high incidence of blindness in the Indian population. Forus has developed an affordable vision device product aimed at rural areas that uses such a hardware-software combination. If successful, the device could find wide use in other developing countries.
