India's electronics sector has been one of the biggest beneficiaries from the government's flagship 'Make in India' scheme, and has witnessed jump in electronics manufacturing as well as export growth, government officials said.

While overall production of electronics in the country has reached Rs 9.52 lakh crore at present, showing a 17.4 percent CAGR from Rs 1.9 lakh crore in 2014 -15, electronics manufacturing exports have also risen substantially from about Rs 38,263 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 2.41 lakh crore at present, showing a 22.7 percent.

Both these have shown “significantly faster than the growth of other export sectors”, S. Krishnan, Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), said on the 10th anniversary of Make in India.

Mobile phones

One of the major elements of the electronics sector has been mobile phones, the official said. In 2014-15, only 26 percent of the mobile phones which were being sold in India were made in India, the rest were being imported. Today, 99.2 percent of all mobile phones which are sold in India are made in India.

“We are manufacturing between 325 to 330 million mobile phones a year in India and on an average there are about a billion mobile phones in use in India.We have virtually saturated the domestic market and that's why you see that there's a substantial uptick in the exports of mobile phones,” Krishnan added.

India's mobile phone exports have seen a 77-fold jump, from Rs 1,566 crore in 2014-15 to about Rs 1.2 lakh crore in 2023-24.

PLI Scheme for mobile sector

India has exceeded overall production target, and has reached Rs 6 lakh 661 crore as the total value of production and investment of Rs 9,100 crore, which is again well above the investment. The total employment achieved has been 1,22,613, which again is as per the original target of the scheme.

“This has been one of the big stories in the Make in India,and today the electronic sector employs close to about 1.2 million people all over the country” Krishnan said.

Semiconductor manufacturing - the way ahead

Setting up a semiconductor manufacturing base in the country has been the other big part of Make in India, something which the country has been attempting to achieve for over six decades, Krishnan said.

With the launch of the India Semiconductor Mission and the five major projects which have been approved, starting with Micron, the two projects by Tata Electronics, the one project by CG Power, and the last project by Keynes, a real manufacturing base of semiconductors in this country is being established in India, the official added.