India will no more ...A Dumping yard

 The BIS certification is drawing widespread awareness both in India and overseas. According to the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Only BIS-compliant products will be allowed for sale, manufacture and import in India in the categories including notebooks, video games, tablets, plasma/LCD/LED TV sets and monitors (above 32-inch), printers, scanners, telephone answering machines, electronic music systems, ODDs, microwave ovens, wireless keyboards, amplifiers, electronics clocks, set-top boxes and automatic data processing machines. 

Dr. Alok ,
Executive Vice President ,
canon

Initial hiccups and challenges are common where any rule gets introduced for the first time and especially when that involves multiple parties. In the case of Compulsory Registration Order (CRO), Companies, Bureau of Indian Standards, testing labs are involved and the process is completely new to everyone which created some processing hurdles. Primarily, there were challenges in terms of lack of testing labs, frequent changes in guidelines, missing technical details and delay in the certification process which prompted the companies to ask for extension of the deadline. Keeping the festive season (which is supposed to be the sale season in India) in mind and co-operating with electronic companies, Indian Government has repeatedly extended the deadline. The government had earlier set April 3, 2013 and then July 3, 2013 for vendors to get their products BIS-compliant. However, after requests from manufacturers and industry bodies, the deadline has once again been extended the deadline to January 2014. Regarding the extension of the deadline, Dr.Alok Bharadwaj. Executive Vice President Canon comments, “We do not want it to be an incomplete work and that is why industry requested ministry to extend the deadline, which I am happy that the date has been extended. There are still few unanswered questions, which we have to resolve somehow to cross the bridge. We are talking to the ministry to have those couple of issues to get resolved.”

Dr, Alok added, “One of the biggest issues is stickers, which has to be labeled with a very big sentence. So I cannot even put my whole printer. I can wrap it twice to do the labeling. So we want a smaller message to come. These are one of the issues that we are now talking to Government to sort it out. Rest of it is absolutely fine; almost all of our products are now BIS approved. As far as sales or process are concerned, this certification will not affect us.” There was initially much confusion regarding the process, however seems like things are slowly falling into place.

BIS: The positive impacts

Anwar Shirpurwala,
Executive Director,
MAIT

BIS operate on the basis of trust and thus quality control is the foremost requirement of the system responsible for managing quality. Most in the companies are favoring the new certification; vendors believe that the new order will remove unhealthy competition and price wars from non-serious players.  Anwar Shirpurwala Executive Director, Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT) comments, “We appreciate the decision of Government to remove substandard electronics products from the market by making it mandatory for all manufacturers to get their electronic products certified for compliance with BIS standards. The decision would not only help the consumers but also enable a healthy and fair competition of certified products in the market.”

Rahul agarwal ,
Executive Director-Commercial,Business Segment ,
Lenovo India

Agrees, Rahul Agarwal, Executive Director-Commercial Business Segment, Lenovo India remarks, “There has been a proliferation of IT products in our daily lives and the BIS certification initiative is a positive step towards encouraging only genuine products in the market. “

The other thing which is also going to happen which is also good for the Indian economy, not necessarily too pleasant for all the vendors is that IT companies will slowly start manufacturing products in India, which has already started. This is going to drive more employment and thing like that. Venu Reddy, Research Director IDC India has also expressed his views. He said, “In my view, it is broadly the right thing to do and it is relevant for India as bad quality products are not going to come to India. From vendor’s perspective, products may take some more time to reach the market, but the reality is the certification is making sure that good products are not getting competition from cheap quality products.” 

Venu Reddy,
Reserch Director,
IDC India

It is found, that the BIS certification would help only products of certain standard to enter in the market which would automatically remove the sub- standard products. Being India an import driven country doesn’t mean that any quality of products can be placed in the Indian market.  This helps the consumers as well as the Industry. In terms of regulation and quality control, it is a good move by the Government. Although it make take some time and effort on part of manufacturers and importers to get the BIS certification, the end result to the customer will be beneficial and it would help controlling low quality products from flooding the market and play a significant role in controlling import structure in India and usher uniformity in the IT products space in the country. If the products are being manufactured in India, the local manufacturing process can be monitored much more easily by the Government and they can put certain standards, whereas if you are importing it, it cannot put guidelines or check some balances on manufacturing that is happening in a completely different country. All that, which Indian Government can do to ensure that products are coming to India are of a certain quality, is by sending it for certification process.

BIS: The Negative impacts

Besides the positives that we’ve already mentioned, it will also help to reduce price wars and selling of inferior goods on the basis of price alone. Negatives are that in terms of current information structure and process requirements there is ambiguity. The number of testing centers as of now is also less and considering the huge market for imports and manufactured IT products in India, these do not look enough. There were also delays in communicating the process and deadlines and there are concerns in the industry that like many laws and policies in our countr y, BIS should not become another project that is noble in thought but plagued by poor implementation and management at execution level that ends being just another hurdle for companies wanting to do business in India.

BIS: Things to be taken care

Vinay Shetty,
Country Head,Coponent,
Business,Asus India

For BIS certification to be really effective, the certification process has to be streamlined, it should be faster and it should be transparent. As of now, there is a problem of speed at which the certification process is happening. For example, on an average, there are almost 300-400 new mobile phone models launched every quarter. So, if all has to go for the certification process, the speed at which they need to do have to be quite fast. This is one of the reasons why manufacturing companies are currently avoiding it. Adding more to this, Vinay Shetty, Country Head, Component Business, ASUS (India) exerts, “Also, there needs to be more transparency on the testing, methodology, results, timeframe and process related to the certification. The process should be well managed and should be kept free of bureaucracy and red-tape.”

For more details contact:
satinder@varindia.com