E-repair market could be worth $20 bn

Ajai Chowdhry, founder of technology services firm HCL and chairman of the Electronic Product Innovation Consortium (EPIC) Foundation, said there is a growing market for electronics refurbishment and repair services. “The refurbishing market for smartphones alone is estimated to be $10 billion a year,” he said, adding that collectively, the electronics repair market could account for $20 billion.

Chowdhry added that initial steps are being taken to formalize the repair industry, which includes moves such as Flipkart’s acquisition of refurbishment and repair services startup Yantra in January this year. While examples are still limited, services such as Onsite-Go and Urban Company are starting to offer home repair services for smartphones, laptops and other common devices. Onsite-Go, in fact, also offers annual maintenance contracts (AMC) for the service and repair of customer equipment.

Industry organization Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (Mait) presented the benefits of these services to IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on September 7. Nitin Kunkolienker, president emeritus of Mai, said that for such services to grow, encouraging local manufacturing of components could be critical.

“One of the key aspects of promoting a home repair services economy is to ensure that components are sourced locally, which has not been widely done until now. India has a robust supply chain that caters to various industries, which can be diversified to procure and manufacture components that are critical to growing a local repair economy,” Kunkolienker said.

Meanwhile, Nitin Gupta, chief executive of e-waste recycling firm Attero India, said the company has seen a clear increase in the volume of e-waste it collects and recycles each year, although the benefits of these actions have not trickled down to companies in India so far.

Post your comment
The first article