PLI, other schemes push India's electronics exports to 47% growth in Q1; mobile manufacturing jumps 150× in a decade

In a sweet success story for 'Make In India' amid US tariffs on India, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Piyush Goyal, has said India's electronics exports have seen a surge of over 47% in Q1 of 2025-26 over the same quarter in 2024-25. Several initiatives launched by the current government under Make in India have led to this strong manufacturing growth, he said, adding that it resulted in robust production growth from $31 billion to $133 billion in a decade beginning 2014-15.

Playing a key role in strengthening exports, the electronics sector has also generated large-scale jobs in solar modules, networking devices, charger adapters, and electronic parts. "We have moved from having 2 mobile manufacturing units in 2014 to over 300 today," said Goyal, adding that for India, one of the greatest achievements is that it transformed from a mobile importer to the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer.

Let's try to understand what are the key steps taken by the government in the past 10 years to become a major mobile manufacturing hub, which have resulted in a strong electronics manufacturing ecosystem in India. These manufacturing initiatives have helped the production of electronics goods increase six times to ₹11.3 lakh crore and the export increase 8 times to ₹3.27 lakh crore by FY25. At the same time, the number of mobile manufacturing units have surged to 300, and the total value of production hit ₹5.45 lakh crore, a 28-times growth from ₹18,000 crore by FY15. India exported around ₹2 lakh crore worth of electronics by FY25, increasing 127 times from ₹1,500 crore in FY15. As of FY15, it used to import 75% of mobile phones, which has now reduced to 0.2% by FY25.

Overall, India has a strong information technology ecosystem. It generates annual revenues of more than $250 billion and employs over 6 million people. In this, electronics manufacturing is a major contributor. The government's Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS), notified on 8th April 2025, aims to develop a robust component manufacturing ecosystem by attracting global and domestic investments. It covers sub-assemblies, bare components, their complete supply chain ecosystem and capital equipment and their sub-assemblies.

India has seen over $4 billion worth of FDI in electronics manufacturing in the last 5 years (i.e. since FY 2020-21), of which $2.8 billion was contributed by MeitY's production-linked incentive schemes (PLI) beneficiaries alone, as per the government data. The government's PLI for large-scale electronics manufacturing (LSEM) and IT hardware have significantly impacted the mobile manufacturing sector in India, particularly in transforming India from a net importer to a net exporter of mobile phones; India is now the second-largest mobile manufacturing country.

The PLI scheme for LSEM has attracted a cumulative investment of ₹12,390 crore, leading to a total production worth ₹8,44,752 crore, with exports of ₹4,65,809 crore, which generated 1,30,330 direct jobs till June 2025. The IT hardware PLI scheme has seen total investment worth ₹717.13 crore, leading to ₹12,195.84 crore production and 5,056 direct jobs till Jun’25.

Notably, the US is a major market for India's smartphone exports, with a 43.9% share, and exports totalling $10.6 billion. Due to a temporary exemption despite Trump's 50% export tariffs on India, the sector currently enjoys zero tariffs to the US. However, if the expected trade deal with the US is not reached, it could pose a major threat to the thriving industry.