Make in India has significantly expanded India’s electronics production and strengthened its ability to attract investment, but the 12-year record also exposes a harder problem: output and exports have grown faster than manufacturing’s contribution to GDP and its share of employment. The initiative’s strongest gains are concentrated in sectors such as electronics, while its original promise of a broad, job-rich industrial transformation remains unfinished.
The initiative, launched in 2014, was built around a simple proposition: manufacturing could make India a global production base while creating jobs, raising exports and widening the country’s economic base. On September 25, 2026, the programme completed 12 years. Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted gains in domestic manufacturing, investment and exports, while Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal described the change partly as a rise in confidence among Indian founders and manufacturers.
The evidence supplied in the review shows that this confidence is not without foundation. Electronics production rose from around Rs 1.9 lakh crore in 2014-15 to nearly Rs 13.11 lakh crore in 2025-26. Mobile phone production increased from roughly Rs 18,000 crore to Rs 6.27 lakh crore over the same period. India, which once imported most of the phones used domestically, now produces nearly all of them at home, according to the report.
That shift has been closely associated with the Production Linked Incentive, or PLI, framework. By March 2026, PLI schemes had attracted about Rs 2.40 lakh crore in actual investment, generated approximately Rs 23.8 lakh crore in production and sales, supported exports worth around Rs 15.2 lakh crore and contributed to more than 14.6 lakh direct and indirect jobs. These figures point to a substantial change in production capacity, although they do not by themselves establish that the same scale of transformation has occurred across Indian manufacturing as a whole.
Electronics shows what policy can achieve
Electronics is the clearest example of a sector where targeted policy, market demand and foreign investment have reinforced one another. The increase in mobile phone production demonstrates the effectiveness of building a domestic manufacturing base around a product with a large internal market and strong global demand.
Industry executives cited by NDTV Business describe a shift that extends beyond simple import substitution. Aditya Khemka, managing director of CP PLUS, said Indian technology companies had moved from producing for the local market towards building for global markets. The company’s Kadapa plant now produces more than 2.5 million surveillance devices a month, according to the report.
Rajeev Singh of BenQ India described a similar movement from a focus on cost and compliance towards capability and resilience. The company’s India-made share of its interactive-panel business is expected to nearly double in two years, he said. Rahul Garg of Moglix said electronics output had grown nearly sevenfold in a decade and pointed to the increasing presence of recognised startups in smaller Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns.
The significance of these developments lies in the possibility of building production ecosystems rather than isolated assembly lines. However, the material supplied for this review also records an industry concern that the next phase must include deeper backward integration, domestic research and development, local engineering and technology designed in India. Higher assembly volumes are therefore being treated as an important first stage, not as proof that the full industrial chain has been established.
The same distinction matters for cities. Manufacturing expansion is not only a factory-floor story. It depends on industrial land, reliable power, logistics, transport links, skilled labour, supplier networks and access to finance. When production is concentrated in final assembly, the urban and regional benefits may remain narrower than when component manufacturing, research, warehousing and supporting services grow around it.
The GDP and jobs gap remains central
The most important weakness in the Make in India record is the gap between the scale of the original ambition and the measured economy-wide outcome. The initiative initially aimed to raise manufacturing’s share of GDP to 25 per cent by 2022, a target later extended to 2025. That target was not achieved. The report places manufacturing’s share of GDP between 13 per cent and 17 per cent during the period under review.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge cited a manufacturing GDP share of 12.83 per cent in 2023, compared with 15.25 per cent a decade earlier. He also argued that several PLI-covered sectors, including solar modules and specialty steel, had underdelivered. These are political statements and are presented as such in the supplied report, but they identify the central question facing the programme: whether selected sectoral successes have translated into a durable increase in manufacturing’s weight in the wider economy.
Employment data makes that question more difficult. The share of the workforce employed in manufacturing fell from 12.6 per cent in 2011-12 to 10.9 per cent in 2020-21, before recovering slightly to 11.6 per cent the following year. Those figures remain far below the ambition of creating 100 million new manufacturing jobs.
Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary, said the programme had fallen short of expectations, particularly on private investment and broad-based job growth. He also argued that manufacturing growth, measured through Gross Value Added and the Index of Industrial Production, had generally trailed overall economic growth during the 12-year period. The report does not independently resolve that political assessment, but the employment figures make clear that increased production has not automatically produced a proportionate expansion in manufacturing work.
This is the distinction between manufacturing growth and manufacturing transformation. A factory can produce more with greater automation, imported components or a smaller workforce. That may raise output and exports without delivering the volume or geographical spread of jobs once associated with industrialisation. The supplied evidence does not establish the precise reasons for the employment gap, but it shows why production totals alone cannot be used as a complete measure of success.
Investment has risen, but domestic depth matters
Foreign investment is another area where the numbers show a clear gain. India attracted cumulative FDI of $843 billion between 2014-15 and 2025-26, a 169 per cent increase over the previous 12 years. In 2025-26 alone, inflows reached a record $94.53 billion, according to the report.
Startups have also expanded sharply. More than 2.23 lakh startups had been recognised by March 2026, creating over 23.36 lakh jobs, while 55,200 new startups were added in FY26. These figures indicate a larger entrepreneurial and technology ecosystem, though recognised startup jobs are not equivalent to manufacturing employment and should not be treated as a substitute for it.
The policy challenge is therefore not simply to attract more capital. It is to convert investment into supplier depth, domestic design capability and businesses that can scale beyond assembly. Khemka called for deeper backward integration, homegrown research and development, and technology designed in India. Singh similarly emphasised local engineering, innovation and value creation rather than localisation measured only through higher percentages.
That agenda places pressure on the institutions surrounding manufacturing. Companies require access to land and utilities, transport systems that can move components and finished goods, industrial clusters capable of supporting suppliers, and finance that allows smaller firms to expand. The report identifies easy and timely finance for MSMEs and startups as a continuing industry demand, along with quicker access to markets and public procurement.
For urban India, the MSME question is especially significant. Large plants can create visible investment and export numbers, but smaller suppliers often determine whether industrial activity spreads through local economies. If those firms cannot secure affordable finance or enter procurement chains, cities may receive factories without developing the wider employment and enterprise networks that make industrial growth more inclusive.
The next phase must move beyond assembly
The 12-year review leaves two conclusions that need to be held together. First, Make in India has produced measurable gains, particularly in electronics, mobile phones, investment and selected export-oriented sectors. Second, those gains have not yet delivered the programme’s broader manufacturing and employment ambitions.
The gap is partly one of scale and partly one of structure. Electronics can grow rapidly while manufacturing’s overall GDP share remains well below target. FDI can reach record levels while domestic firms continue to face financing constraints. Startup numbers can rise while manufacturing’s share of employment remains modest. These are not necessarily contradictory outcomes, but they show that headline growth in one part of the industrial system cannot substitute for economy-wide transformation.
The evidence also suggests that the next phase will be judged less by the number of products assembled in India and more by what is built around them: components, engineering, research, supplier networks, skilled jobs and resilient domestic firms. Industry voices cited in the report are asking for precisely that shift, alongside simpler finance and faster access to markets.
What the 12-year record confirms is a successful expansion of capacity in important sectors, not the completion of India’s manufacturing ambition. What remains unresolved is whether policy can convert sectoral momentum into higher manufacturing value added, a larger employment share and deeper domestic production ecosystems. Those indicators, rather than production announcements alone, will determine whether Make in India becomes a broad industrial transition or remains a collection of strong but uneven sectoral gains.
