By Naman Shah
India’s electronic manufacturing industry has quietly crossed a threshold that few could have envisioned a decade ago. In 2024-25, India’s electronic manufacturing industry crossed Rs 11.3 lakh crore in size, up from Rs 1.9 lakh crore in 2014-15. This industry is slated to grow to over RS 45 Lakh Crore by FY 2031. These are no longer aspirational numbers; they are the outcome of policy, industry capabilities, and a supply chain infrastructure that, while slowly, is beginning to take shape.
The truth, however, is that India is still an assembly-driven electronics industry. The next phase of growth will depend on whether we can get beyond that and how quickly we can get beyond that.
Building On A Stable Policy Framework
The PLI Scheme, the Electronic Components Manufacturing Scheme, and government initiatives have succeeded in attracting investments and promoting domestic manufacturing. Electronic manufacturing clusters in Noida, Chennai, Pune, and Bengaluru today boast of global companies alongside local ones, creating a critical mass of capabilities that were nonexistent a decade ago.
The policy foundation has been set. Policy tailwinds, however, do not make industry capabilities; execution and speed do.
Journey Electronics Manufacturing: From Design to Delivery
Each electronic device that reaches a consumer's hands goes through a lengthy and rigorous process. The Design to Delivery process entails many complex steps, and when all these come together, a market-ready, mass-manufacturable, and economically viable product is built.
The process involves a collaboration of a cross-functional team consisting of Engineering, Material Science, Industrial Design, Production, Purchase, Product Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Commercial and Design and Development Team. The Printed Circuit Board (PCB), sometimes also referred to as any electronic device's nervous system, comes next. It then goes through a rigorous testing phase before mass production starts.
Lastly, there is the PCB assembly, where the reliability of the finished product is largely determined by Surface Mount Technology (SMT) machines, which can assemble electronic components with a precision of microns, followed by a controlled soldering phase. Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) systems are then used to inspect the PCBs for defects that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Only those PCBs that pass through these rigorous testing phases can be considered reliable.
The reliability of any electronic device can be determined at this stage; there are no shortcuts. Once that is done, the finished products go through functional assessment, durability testing, and safety testing before they are packaged, designed to protect against moisture, electrostatic emission, and damage during transportation, and finally distributed through the logistics infrastructure, which today reaches the shelves and doorsteps in India. These are highly evolved and technology-driven processes.
Bridging Gap That Determines Challenge Ahead
India has indeed come a long way in the indigenous development of mechanical, plastic, enclosure, and structural parts. However, we still rely on imports for the core of electronics, semiconductor chips, advanced sensors, and integrated circuits.
This is not a minor challenge; it is, in fact, the core issue underlying India’s ambitions in electronics manufacturing. Recent global supply chain disruptions have served as a wake-up call, highlighting how vulnerable an assembly-led manufacturing model can be when the flow of critical components is disrupted.
The investments in indigenous development of semiconductor chips are necessary and overdue. But such investments would take a few years to start yielding results. In the meantime, supply chain management, supply diversification, and supplier development are the true differentiators for manufacturers in India today.
Mapping Sector’s Future
The next phase of India's electronics industry growth will not be driven by costs alone. The global buyers who are increasingly considering India as an alternative to China are not just looking for cost-effective assembly options. They are looking at the overall quality systems, engineering capabilities, and scalability without compromise.
The industry’s priorities will need to evolve, with a stronger emphasis on localizing component production, increasing investment in R&D and product design capabilities, and placing greater focus on quality rather than merely meeting compliance standards.
India has the policy push, the market size, and now the manufacturing capabilities too. What remains to be seen is whether we can accelerate the move from volume-driven growth to value-driven competitiveness.
The move towards value-driven competitiveness has already begun. The speed at which we make this move would determine whether the Rs 45 Lakh Crore target is just a number or a milestone.
(The author is the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of LeSol Group)
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