Underlining the need to give a greater thrust to the sector, F C Kohli, deputy chairman of Tata Consultancy Services, said India had virtually no hardware industry. He was speaking on "IT in the Indian Context" at the Indian Merchants Chamber here today.

With PC penetration in India at less than 1 per 1000 people as opposed to 190 in Singapore and 220 in Japan, the need of the hour was to have higher PC production. "The country needs at least four to five million PCs annually. This calls for a thriving hardware and component industry," he said. Of the $ 2 billion hardware industry worldwide, India had a share of only Rs 800 crore last year. Importing five millions PCs would drain the country's foreign exchange -- the solution lay in creating more design engineers, Kohli explained.