Twelve Years of Make in India: Electronics Output Rises Nearly Sevenfold to ₹13.11 Lakh Crore

Twelve years after its launch, Make in India has entered a different phase of the country’s industrial development. The programme that began in September 2014 with an emphasis on attracting manufacturing investment now extends across electronics, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, steel, defence, railways, semiconductors, renewable-energy equipment and advanced industrial technologies.

Government data released as Make in India completes 12 years show particularly sharp growth in electronics manufacturing. India’s electronics production increased from around ₹1.9 lakh crore in 2014-15 to approximately ₹13.11 lakh crore in 2025-26, representing an increase of nearly seven times over the period.

Mobile-phone manufacturing has expanded even faster. Production increased from approximately ₹18,000 crore in 2014-15 to around ₹6.27 lakh crore in 2025-26, while India has emerged as the world’s second-largest mobile-phone manufacturer by volume.

Electronics Becomes One of the Strongest Manufacturing Stories

Electronics provides one of the clearest examples of the structural changes that have taken place within Indian manufacturing during the past decade.

Production reached ₹13.11 lakh crore in 2025-26, registering growth of 15.8 per cent over the previous financial year. Electronics exports have simultaneously increased from around ₹38,000 crore in 2014-15 to approximately ₹4.24 lakh crore in 2025-26.

This means exports have expanded more than elevenfold while production has risen nearly sevenfold. Electronic goods have consequently become India’s third-largest export category, with exports valued at $47.96 billion during FY 2025-26.

The changes are particularly visible in mobile phones. India produced only about ₹18,000-18,900 crore worth of mobile phones in 2014-15. By 2025-26, production had reached approximately ₹6.27 lakh crore, an increase of around 33 times.

Mobile-phone exports rose even more dramatically, from roughly ₹1,500 crore to around ₹2.59-2.60 lakh crore over the same period.

From Import Dependence to Large-Scale Phone Production

The transformation of mobile manufacturing is significant because India was once heavily dependent on imported finished handsets.

Today, government estimates indicate that more than 99 per cent of mobile phones used in India are manufactured domestically. The country has also moved beyond manufacturing primarily for its own enormous consumer market and has developed into a major smartphone export base.

The next challenge is deeper localisation. Final assembly represents only one layer of the electronics value chain. Displays, camera modules, semiconductor components, printed circuit boards, batteries, connectors, precision components and manufacturing equipment account for substantial portions of the value embedded in electronic products.

Policy attention has therefore increasingly shifted from assembling final devices towards developing a domestic component ecosystem and raising local value addition.

The Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme, semiconductor initiatives and the new Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme are intended to support this transition.

Manufacturing GVA Records 10.88 Per Cent CAGR

The wider manufacturing sector has also recorded strong recent growth under India’s revised national accounts series.

Manufacturing Gross Value Added at constant prices recorded a compound annual growth rate of 10.88 per cent between 2022-23 and 2025-26. Manufacturing output under the Index of Industrial Production also increased by 7 per cent during April-July 2026 compared with the corresponding period in 2025.

The revised national accounts series uses 2022-23 as its base year, replacing the earlier 2011-12 base.

There is an important distinction, however, between the growth rate of manufacturing output and manufacturing’s overall share of the economy. Manufacturing accounted for 14.7 per cent of total GVA in 2022-23 and 14.8 per cent in 2025-26 at current prices. Government data therefore indicate strong growth in output without a comparable increase yet in manufacturing’s overall share of national GVA.

This distinction will be important as India attempts to move from expanding manufacturing volumes towards raising the sector’s weight within the wider economy.

PLI Schemes Push Investment and Production

Production Linked Incentive schemes have become one of the principal industrial-policy mechanisms associated with the broader manufacturing push.

The schemes cover 14 sectors including electronics, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, solar photovoltaic modules, telecommunications equipment, specialty steel and textiles.

According to the government’s Make in India anniversary review, PLI schemes had attracted approximately ₹2.40 lakh crore in investment by June 2026. They had generated more than ₹22.66 lakh crore in production and sales, supported exports exceeding ₹15.20 lakh crore and contributed to the creation of more than 14 lakh jobs.

PLI programmes differ from conventional investment subsidies because incentives are linked to incremental manufacturing or sales targets. Their longer-term impact will increasingly depend on whether production growth translates into domestic technology development, component localisation, research capacity and globally competitive supply chains.

India Builds a Semiconductor Manufacturing Base

Semiconductors now represent another major expansion of the Make in India strategy.

India initially concentrated much of its electronics success on assembly and system manufacturing. Semiconductor policy is intended to move domestic industry further upstream into chip fabrication, advanced packaging, chip design, materials and manufacturing equipment.

Semicon 2.0, approved in July 2026 with an outlay of ₹1.275 lakh crore, expands support across semiconductor design, manufacturing, advanced packaging, materials, equipment, research and workforce development.

India is also developing specialised chips for strategic applications. ISRO and the Semiconductor Laboratory have developed the VIKRAM3201 and KALPANA3201 microprocessors for space applications, with VIKRAM3201 qualified for the demanding environmental conditions encountered by launch vehicles.

These developments represent a shift from measuring manufacturing primarily by the number of finished products assembled in India towards building capabilities in technologies that sit deeper inside industrial supply chains.

Defence Production Approaches Four Times Its 2014-15 Level

Defence manufacturing has recorded another substantial expansion during the Make in India period.

The value of indigenous defence production increased from ₹46,429 crore in 2014-15 to a record ₹1.78 lakh crore in FY 2025-26, according to government figures. This represents an increase of approximately 283 per cent.

The expansion encompasses aircraft, helicopters, missiles, artillery, armoured systems, naval platforms, electronics and a growing network of private-sector component and subsystem suppliers.

HAL has expanded production infrastructure for the Tejas fighter and HTT-40 basic trainer, while private companies increasingly participate in aerospace structures, electronics, propulsion systems and defence exports.

This widening supplier base is important because sustainable defence manufacturing depends not merely on assembling major platforms but on creating domestic capability across engines, sensors, electronics, materials, precision components and manufacturing processes.

Steel, Automobiles and Pharmaceuticals Expand Production

Growth has also occurred across more established industrial sectors.

India’s crude steel production increased from 81.7 million tonnes in 2014-15 to 170 million tonnes in 2025-26, more than doubling over the period.

Vehicle production reached 31.03 million units in 2024-25, approximately one-third higher than its 2014-15 level. Passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, two-wheelers and three-wheelers have all recorded production growth over different periods as domestic demand and exports expanded.

India’s pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, ranks third globally by production volume. Annual pharmaceutical turnover reached approximately ₹4.72 lakh crore in 2024-25, while domestic medical-device manufacturing increased from roughly ₹28,000 crore in 2019-20 to ₹41,500 crore in 2024-25.

These industries demonstrate that Make in India increasingly spans both newer technology sectors and traditional manufacturing industries where India already possesses significant scale.

Solar Manufacturing Capacity Rises Sharply

Renewable-energy manufacturing has become another important industrial segment.

Solar-module manufacturing capacity increased from only 2.3 GW in 2014 to approximately 192 GW by June 2026. Solar-cell manufacturing capacity expanded from around 1.2 GW to approximately 30 GW over the same period.

The large difference between module and cell capacity also illustrates one of the continuing challenges facing Indian manufacturing: domestic capacity often develops at different speeds along different stages of the same supply chain.

India is consequently attempting to deepen production across wafers, cells, modules, materials and related manufacturing equipment rather than remaining dependent on imported upstream components.

Manufacturing the Machines Behind Manufacturing

One of the less visible changes is occurring in capital goods — the machinery used by other industries to manufacture products.

Production across capital goods and heavy-engineering sectors increased from approximately ₹2.87 lakh crore in 2019-20 to ₹5.70 lakh crore in 2024-25.

Machine-tool production more than doubled during this period, while earthmoving and mining machinery, printing machinery, plastic-processing equipment, electrical machinery and food-processing machinery also recorded substantial expansion.

The importance of this segment goes beyond its direct production value. A manufacturing economy that depends heavily on imported production machinery remains vulnerable even when final products are assembled domestically.

Expanding domestic machine-tool, automation, robotics, precision-engineering and industrial-equipment capability is therefore becoming increasingly important to the next stage of Make in India.

Rare-Earth Magnets and Strategic Materials Enter the Programme

Recent policies are extending industrial development into strategic materials.

A pilot facility for neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets was established at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials in Hyderabad in March 2026.

These high-performance permanent magnets are critical components in electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics, industrial motors and several advanced defence and aerospace systems.

The government has separately allocated ₹7,280 crore for developing integrated domestic capacity for sintered rare-earth permanent magnets.

This represents an important evolution in India’s manufacturing policy because supply-chain resilience increasingly depends on access to materials and components that sit far upstream from the finished product.

Infrastructure and Industrial Parks Move Into the Next Phase

Make in India has also become increasingly interconnected with logistics, industrial land and infrastructure programmes.

The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan is being used to coordinate large infrastructure projects and improve connections between industrial centres, ports, railways, highways and logistics hubs.

By August 2026, the Network Planning Group under the programme had evaluated 396 infrastructure projects worth approximately ₹18.66 lakh crore.

The India Industrial Land Bank had mapped 4,220 industrial parks covering almost 6.98 lakh hectares by May 2026, while the Bharat Audyogik Vikas Yojana has been approved to develop 100 investment-ready industrial parks with integrated infrastructure.

These initiatives address a long-standing constraint on Indian manufacturing: factories cannot become globally competitive solely through production incentives if logistics, land availability, transport connectivity and industrial infrastructure remain expensive or fragmented.

The Next Challenge Is Deeper Value Addition

Twelve years of Make in India have clearly produced substantial increases in production across several sectors, with electronics and mobile phones providing some of the most striking examples.

The next stage is more demanding.

India must increasingly manufacture not only finished phones, vehicles, aircraft, solar modules and electronic systems, but also the chips, sensors, displays, machine tools, materials, components and manufacturing equipment required to produce them.

This is why recent policy has moved towards semiconductor fabrication, electronics components, rare-earth magnets, specialty steel, advanced industrial parks and domestic capital goods.

The numbers show that India is manufacturing considerably more than it did when Make in India began in 2014. Electronics production approaching ₹13.11 lakh crore and mobile-phone production exceeding ₹6.27 lakh crore illustrate the scale that has already been achieved.

The longer-term measure of the programme, however, will be how much of the technology, intellectual property, components and industrial machinery behind those products is also created in India.

That transition — from assembling more products to controlling increasingly large portions of the manufacturing value chain — is emerging as the defining challenge of Make in India’s next phase.

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References

Press Information Bureau, Government of India — 12 Years of Make in India: India’s Journey towards a Manufacturing Nation, 24 September 2026. (Press Information Bureau)
PIB backgrounder

Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology — Electronics Revolution: Mobiles Powering Exports & Giving High Value Jobs to the People of India, 15 July 2026. (Press Information Bureau)

Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation — Manufacturing GVA under the revised 2022-23 base-year series, 12 August 2026. (Press Information Bureau)

Press Information Bureau — Manufacturing Momentum: Building a Self-Reliant India, 14 August 2026. (Press Information Bureau)

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