India’s smartphone industry is entering a new phase as the government pushes for localisation of parts, batteries, and materials, aiming to capture more of the global supply chain amid a maturing sector and rising exports.
India’s smartphone story is moving into a new phase, with the government now pushing the industry beyond final assembly and into the domestic production of parts, battery materials and other inputs. Electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the next stage of the Make in India programme is to build more of the supply chain inside the country, not just to put finished phones together.
The shift comes 12 years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Make in India in New Delhi on September 25, 2014. Government figures cited by Business Today Bazaar show how far the sector has travelled since then: India has become the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker, with roughly 330 million handsets produced each year, and 99.2% of the phones sold in India in 2023-24 were made domestically. A decade earlier, the share was just 26%.
Vaishnaw’s remarks also pointed to a deeper industrial ambition. According to Gadgets 360, the government wants more of the contents of a smartphone made in India, including cameras, displays, speakers, coils, printed circuit boards and connectors. The focus is extending down to battery production too, with domestic manufacturing of battery cells and the materials inside them, such as synthetic graphite and electrolyte additives, now part of the policy push.
That effort is being supported by large investment and incentive schemes. Business Today Bazaar said Japanese company ATL is setting up a battery cell plant in Manesar, Haryana, with an investment of about Rs 3,000 crore. Nation Press reported that Vaishnaw also highlighted the wider battery ecosystem under the Rs 18,100 crore Advanced Chemistry Cell incentive scheme, while mobile phone manufacturing continues to benefit from the government’s Rs 62,500 crore production-linked incentive programme, which runs from 2026-27 to 2030-31 and offers incentives of 2.25% to 5%, with extra support for design and research and development for Indian brands.
The broader result is that India is no longer only assembling devices for the domestic market. Reuters has previously reported that the country has become an important export base for smartphones, particularly for Apple, as global manufacturers widen production away from China. As the sector matures, the government’s message is that India must now capture more of the value chain, from raw materials to finished devices, if it is to turn its assembly boom into a lasting manufacturing base.
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