The Indian Television Industry has evolved from the regional nature of competition in the 1970s, to one where almost all global brands are competing, in the 2000s.
Of late, the electronics manufacturing industry has seen unprecedented changes in the nature and extent of competition, mainly due to innovation in technology. But in India, especially since liberalization, the industry is undergoing a phase of consolidation and intense competition. The present paper captures the different phases of evolution of television manufacturing industry in India, the extent of competition, and its resultant impact on the industry players, especially the domestic firms. This study is divided into three strategically different phases of the Indian television manufacturing industry, viz., pre-1982 (B/W TV era), post-1982 (Color TV era) and post-1991 (liberalized era).
Although telecasting in India was started in 1959, with an experimental transmission center in Delhi, the manufacturing of televisions in India came into existence only during the last three decades. In 1970, for the first time, 14,000 sets were manufactured. Sales of TV sets, as reflected by licenses issued to buyers, were just 676,615 until 1977.
Initially, all the TVs manufactured in India used imported television kits. In that sense, barring few activities like cabinet manufacturing, the TV manufacturing in India was limited to the use of screwdriver technology. As foreign equity participation was largely prohibited, the government, in order to become self-reliant, started developing indigenous TV design through CEERI (Central Electronics and Engineering Research Institute). The locally designed TV (B/W) was set for commercial production in 1975. As the television broadcasting was limited to the black and white picture mode, the production of televisions in India was also limited to the B/W sets till 1981 (see exhibit 1). |
