India’s mobile-manufacturing story has moved beyond PowerPoint aspiration. The country now produces vast numbers of handsets, exports smartphones at scale and imports a tiny share of the finished phones it consumes. A 2026 government review of the large-scale electronics PLI said domestic value addition was around 18–20 percent and reported production and exports above scheme targets. I give the government real credit. Policy created incentives, global supply chains diversified, companies invested and workers entered formal manufacturing. The lazy claim that Make in India produced nothing is untenable. The equally lazy claim that the job is finished is dangerous. India has become exceptionally good at making phones in the sense consumers recognise—a finished object leaves an Indian factory. It must now capture more of what makes that object valuable: components, tooling, design, machinery, materials and intellectual property. Otherwise we will remain an important factory floor whose economics depend heavily on imported technological layers.
Assembly is not a dirty word
Critics sometimes sneer that India “only assembles” phones. This is economically illiterate. Assembly at massive scale requires logistics, quality control, workforce training, supplier coordination and the ability to meet global deadlines. Countries do not teleport from importing finished devices to designing processors. Production ecosystems accumulate capability. Jobs on assembly lines are real jobs, even if they do not satisfy a commentator’s desire for instant semiconductor sovereignty. Export relationships also create leverage: a company shipping globally from India has stronger reasons to cultivate local suppliers than one importing every finished handset.
The PLI’s basic insight was pragmatic. India needed scale before demanding every layer of the value chain. Incentives tied to incremental production helped overcome early disadvantages and encouraged large manufacturers to locate capacity here. The Economic Survey summary on PLI similarly describes electronics as a leading contributor to the programme’s export performance. These are government claims and should be audited against disbursement, employment quality and net fiscal cost, but the physical expansion of production is not a slogan. Factories and exports exist.
Value addition is the honest scoreboard
The government’s own 18–20 percent estimate is useful because it prevents celebration from floating away. A smartphone’s expensive elements include processors, memory, displays, camera sensors and specialised radio components. Many remain imported. Even locally produced parts may rely on imported materials or machines. Gross export value therefore cannot be confused with income retained domestically. The appropriate questions are: how much value is added in India, how quickly is that share rising, which capabilities are becoming locally competitive and what subsidy is required for each step?
This does not mean maximising local content at any cost. Forcing an inferior domestic component into a globally sold phone can make Indian factories uncompetitive. Supply chains specialise across borders for good reasons. Resilience requires diversification, not autarky. Policy should target components where India can develop scale or strategic capability, then measure progress. Tariffs may protect an infant industry temporarily; permanent high tariffs can simply make Indian consumers finance inefficiency. A component ecosystem must eventually win orders because it delivers quality, price and reliability—not because customs barriers leave assemblers no alternative.
Why Chinese brands still dominate shelves
India can be a major manufacturing base while Chinese brands remain powerful in its market. There is no contradiction. Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Realme and others built distribution, service networks and products calibrated to Indian price bands. They understood that a ₹2,000 difference, an extra storage tier or faster charging could decide a sale. Nationality does not replace value. Consumers with limited budgets will not purchase a weaker phone as an industrial-policy donation.
Chinese firms also operate within dense supplier ecosystems developed over decades. India cannot reproduce that network through patriotic advertising. It needs stable policies, ports that move predictably, reliable power, efficient customs, engineering talent and clusters where a supplier can serve multiple customers. Sudden tariff changes and ambiguous rules make localisation more expensive because businesses price political uncertainty into investment. Make in India succeeds when it makes commercial sense to make in India.
Components need a different policy temperament
Final assembly can scale relatively quickly. Components demand longer investment horizons, process knowledge and demanding customer qualification. A supplier may spend years proving that one part meets durability and yield standards. Government announcements operate on election calendars; engineering does not. Incentive schemes must therefore avoid chasing headline factory commitments without examining technology depth and customer demand. Capital equipment sitting idle is not capability.
I would concentrate on a few layers where India has plausible advantages: mechanical enclosures, batteries and battery materials, chargers, printed-circuit-board assemblies, camera modules, packaging and testing, and selected display or semiconductor activities where scale can be justified. Design capability deserves equal attention. Indian engineers already contribute to global products, but domestic firms struggle to convert skill into owned products and components. Procurement, research partnerships and patient capital can help, provided awards are competitive and milestones public.
Employment quality belongs in the calculation
Electronics factories have created large employment opportunities, including for women. That is socially significant. A formal wage can alter household bargaining power and regional development. Yet policy should examine wages, transport, housing, safety, training and career progression rather than publish job totals alone. If workers remain permanently at low-skill stations with high turnover, India captures less human capability than the production numbers suggest. Firms receiving public incentives should report workforce composition and training outcomes in aggregated, privacy-respecting formats.
States compete to attract plants, sometimes with land and additional subsidies. That competition can improve governance, but it can also produce a race to announce incentives whose cost is hidden. Public disclosure should show the combined central and state support, promised employment, realised employment and investment delivered. I support industrial policy; that is precisely why I want it measured. Programmes lose legitimacy when every target is celebrated and every missed condition becomes confidential.
The consumer must not become collateral
A common industrial-policy error is to treat consumers as captive financiers. Import duties can encourage local production, but high effective prices reduce access and slow replacement of unsafe or obsolete devices. Smartphones are infrastructure for payments, education, work and public services. Affordability matters. Policies should reward local value creation more than they punish imports, especially for components not yet produced competitively in India.
Repairability can also deepen the ecosystem. A reliable market for replacement screens, batteries and connectors creates component demand and skilled service work while extending device life. India’s informal repair economy already possesses extraordinary ingenuity. Standards, parts access and training could convert some of that capability into safer, higher-quality employment. Manufacturing policy should consider the full product life cycle, not stop counting when a sealed box leaves the factory.
From China-plus-one to India in its own right
Global firms initially viewed India partly as diversification away from concentrated Chinese supply chains. That opportunity is valuable but temporary. Vietnam, Mexico and other countries also compete. India’s large domestic market is an advantage, yet exports require global cost and quality. The next phase must make companies stay because supplier depth, talent and execution are excellent, not merely because geopolitics makes a second location prudent.
The government should celebrate what worked: scale incentives, infrastructure improvements, export orientation and administrative attention from the top. It should then retire inflated language about complete self-reliance. Modern electronics are globally interdependent. Success means capturing a growing, sophisticated share of that network and retaining the ability to withstand shocks. It does not mean every screw and chip must be Indian.
I am optimistic because the baseline has changed. A decade ago, the debate concerned whether India could manufacture handsets at meaningful scale. It plainly can. The new argument is more demanding and therefore healthier: how much value stays here, which technologies we master, what jobs workers can progress into and whether subsidies produce durable competitiveness. Chinese brands continue to dominate important price segments because they execute ruthlessly. Indian policy should learn from that discipline. Make in India has earned the right to move past defensive boasting. The phone is being made here. Now let us make more of the phone—and make the economics strong enough that nobody needs a slogan to notice.
