Taiwanese companies should team up to explore business opportunities in India’s growing smart cities, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA, 外貿協會) chairman James Huang (黃志芳) said yesterday.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration has unveiled a list of 100 cities for its ambitious smart cities project, Huang told the Taipei Times during a visit to Shantigram, a newly built town developed by India’s infrastructure conglomerate Adani Group.
The trade promotion agency held its Smart Asia trade show featuring technology applications used to improve city infrastructure for the first time in Bengaluru, India, in November last year.
“Some Taiwanese companies successfully secured orders from Indian customers [for the city development projects] after the event,” Huang said, referring to industrial computer provider Advantech Co (研華) and energy management supplier Delta Electronics Inc (台達電).
“LED streetlights and electronic water meters are also niche Taiwanese products [in India],” he said, adding that Taiwanese companies should also consider introducing healthcare and transportation services, such as Taipei’s YouBike public bicycle rental scheme.
Asked about how companies can overcome difficulties when they seek to enter the Indian market, Huang said finding a suitable local business partner might be the most efficient way for Taiwanese firms to build their presence in the nation.
“Taking Adani as an example, the group’s nationwide distribution channels could lend support to Taiwanese companies that would like to promote their products in India,” he said.
Adani is still in discussions with state-owned oil company CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) to jointly build a petrochemical park in India’s Mundra special economic zone, despite increasing uncertainty about the project, people familiar with the matter said.
The two firms are still discussing the project and the Indian group is very willing to participate in the NT$180 billion (US$6.03 million) project, Adani’s Taiwan representative Morris Chang (張健庭) said on Monday, adding that some Japanese firms have also expressed an interest.
Gujarat-headquartered Adani, which operates India’s largest thermal power plant, is also the biggest private energy producer in India.
CPC has been trying to expand its footprint in India to develop a complete supply chain for Taiwanese petrochemical suppliers as part of the government’s New Southbound Policy.
However, CPC chairman Tai Chein (戴謙) last month voiced concerns about the uncertainty of government-backed investment in India, saying that Adani, which previously planned to take a 26 percent stake in the project, had changed its mind.
In addition, Adani’s proposal might bring unfavorable tariffs and higher transportation costs, as the proposed site is not in a special economic zone and does not qualify for favorable tax terms, Tai said.
CPC plans to complete the assessment of the India project by September, it said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts