New Delhi, Nov 30 (IANS) India is a growing market of electronic toys and to build the Indian toys industry ecosystem, electronics and IT can play a crucial role, a senior government official has said.

Amitesh Kumar Sinha, Additional Secretary, MeitY, said that he is very happy that the building blocks for it are getting created and the next generation of engineers are working towards it.

India’s toy industry, once heavily dependent on imports, is now manufacturing domestically and exporting to 153 countries.

To give the industry a boost, MeitY, C-DAC, Indian Toy Industries and LEGO Group celebrated the Convocation Ceremony of the 2nd batch of engineering graduates who have spent a year training under the project ‘Development of Electronics and IT-based Control and Automation Solutions for Consumer Electronic Goods (Toy Industry)’.

The project is a tailor-made initiative of R&D group of the Ministry to foster the growth of the Indian electronic toys industry by developing prototypes and equipping young engineers, including from under-represented communities, with the skills needed to design such toys.

Sinha, who inaugurated the ‘Electronic Toys Lab’ set-up at the C-DAC, Noida, said this programme can be formalised in a bigger way to cater more students and more impact in overall promotion of the Toy industries.

“The CoE setup at CDAC-Noida for e-Toys will onboard NIELIT and MSH and other institutes with electronic Toys in focus. It will help in creating the entrepreneurship/startup,” Sinha added.

Under the MeitY initiative, young engineers were selected from across India from SC/ST and NER background and engaged in R&D activities for a year, gaining hands-on experience in designing and developing electronic toys for first six months working and learning in the e-toys lab at C-DAC-Noida, followed by a six-month training in the industry to create toys prototype based on industry needs.

The participants were provided with a monthly stipend of Rs. 25,000 for one year.

–IANS

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