A decade ago, if you wanted to know what India exported best, smartphones would not have made the list, not even close. They sat somewhere around rank 153, a footnote in the country's trade data. Today, that same product line has become the single largest thing India ships to the rest of the world.
The scale of that flip is hard to overstate. Smartphone exports rose from roughly Rs 27,000 crore in FY 2019-20 to about Rs 2 lakh crore by FY 2024-25, and by calendar 2025 the number had climbed further to Rs 2.62 lakh crore, or close to $30 billion. Domestic production followed the same curve, growing from Rs 2.14 lakh crore to Rs 5.5 lakh crore over the same stretch, pushing India past most rivals to become the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer, trailing only China.
Apple has been central to that story, with Foxconn, Tata Electronics, and Pegatron assembling a large share of iPhones destined for markets well beyond India. But this was never meant to stop at assembly lines. Earlier this month, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 62,500 crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, replacing the older PLI programme that wound down in March. Running from FY 2026-27 through FY 2030-31, the new scheme is built to push India deeper into component manufacturing and homegrown product design, rather than just screwing together parts made elsewhere.
The ambitions attached to it are large. Officials expect smartphone production to eventually reach around Rs 39 lakh crore, alongside a further jump in exports. Along the way, the sector has already created close to 25 lakh jobs, spread across factory floors and supplier networks in states like Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka.
What started as a plan to stop importing phones has quietly turned into one of India's most consequential industrial bets, and this new scheme suggests the government thinks the story is still just getting started.
Filed by
Startup Unplugged
