Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI:
India’s rise as one of the world’s biggest phone-makers is about to enter its next chapter. The Union Cabinet has cleared a Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme with an outlay of about ₹62,500 crore, designed to pick up where the earlier production-linked incentive for large-scale electronics left off when it concluded in March. Running from FY27 to FY31, the new scheme aims to keep the assembly lines — and, crucially, the component makers around them — expanding for another five years.
The ambition is written in the target: cumulative mobile-phone production of roughly ₹39 lakh crore over the scheme’s life. The intent is a shift in emphasis, from final assembly toward the deeper layers of the supply chain — displays, batteries, camera modules and the printed boards that still carry a large import bill. It dovetails with India’s semiconductor push next door: Tata Electronics’ fabrication plant at Dholera, Gujarat, built with Taiwan’s Powerchip, is targeting its first commercial-scale silicon by the end of this year.
From assembly to value: A fresh ₹62,500 crore scheme for mobile manufacturing, alongside the Dholera chip fab’s first-silicon target, aims to deepen how much of a phone is genuinely made in India.
Assembling a phone is a start; making its parts is the prize. The value in electronics lives in the components, and that is where the new scheme points.
At a Glance
• Scheme: Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, ~₹62,500 cr outlay, Cabinet-cleared
• Runs: FY27–FY31; succeeds the electronics PLI that ended in March 2026
• Target: ~₹39 lakh crore of cumulative mobile production
• Alongside: Dholera chip fab (Tata–Powerchip) targets first silicon by end-2026
Why does a manufacturing scheme belong on the front page? Because electronics has quietly become one of India’s largest export categories and a big employer of first-time factory workers, many of them young and many of them women. Deepening the supply chain at home means more of each phone’s value — and more of the jobs that go with it — stays in India, while cutting the reliance on imported parts that can be disrupted by a distant shock.
The constructive read is that India has already proved it can assemble at scale; the task now is to make the parts. The way forward is to pair the incentive with the plumbing an ecosystem needs — component clusters, reliable power and water, technician training, and design capability — so that a scheme measured in lakh-crore targets becomes, on the ground, a phone that is Indian all the way down. Handled well, the assembly line of today becomes the components industry of tomorrow.
