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India’s manufacturing ambitions are moving deeper into the value chain. The opportunity is no longer limited to assembling products or adding factory capacity; it is increasingly about building the technologies, supply chains, skills and industrial capabilities that allow India to compete in strategically important sectors.
At MAKE 2026: India’s Global Manufacturing Era, presented by CNBC-TV18 and the manufacturing platform Zetwerk, our distinguished speakers examined the different dimensions of that challenge-from building a self-reliant clean-energy manufacturing ecosystem and developing a domestic semiconductor value chain to strengthening the productivity, technology and talent that underpin globally competitive manufacturing. Taken together, the sessions offered a view of what it will take for India to move from scale and opportunity to deeper industrial capability.
Zetwerk is a technology-led, asset-light manufacturing platform for industrial and consumer goods in India and globally. It brings together manufacturing capacity across a network of third-party suppliers and its own facilities through a “universal factory”, unified by Zetwerk OS, its proprietary technology backbone. Its customer base spans start-ups and large industrial companies across sectors including utilities, renewables, consumer electronics, artificial intelligence infrastructure, aerospace, space and defence, oil and gas and industrial automation.
India’s clean-energy transition is creating a manufacturing opportunity that extends well beyond solar-panel assembly. In a discussion moderated by Sonal Bhutra, Hardip Singh, COO, Grew Solar; Prashant Mathur, CEO, Saatvik Green Energy; and Harsh Vardhan Govil, COO – Solar Manufacturing, SAEL, examined what it will take to build a more resilient and competitive solar manufacturing ecosystem.
The discussion focused on the need to build greater depth across the solar value chain, including domestic capabilities in cells, wafers, ingots and other upstream components. The role of the Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM), policy consistency, manufacturing scale and the ability to compete with China's established cost and capacity advantages were central to the conversation.
The challenge, however, is not simply to create more capacity. Indian manufacturers also have to contend with capital costs, infrastructure requirements and the need for greater investment in R&D. Building the workforce required for a more sophisticated solar industry, strengthening domestic technology capabilities and creating access to green financing will be important to the next phase of growth.
The opportunity is also being reinforced by new sources of demand. AI data centres, electric mobility and commercial and industrial consumers are creating additional requirements for solar power, making the development of a domestic manufacturing ecosystem increasingly important to India's broader energy-security ambitions. India's solar industry is simultaneously moving towards greater vertical integration, with companies such as Saatvik expanding into solar cells and planning further upstream manufacturing capabilities.
The semiconductor opportunity presents a similar challenge, but with an even more complex value chain.
The discussion brought together Pankaj Mohindroo, Chairman, India Cellular & Electronics Association; Parag Naik, CEO, Sampige Semiconductor; Sujay Shetty, Partner – ESDM & Semiconductor, PwC India; Anand Kumar, MD – India, STMicroelectronics; and Pranjal Jain, Head of Manufacturing & Supply Chain, boAt Lifestyle.
The central question was how India can move from semiconductor ambition to a more complete domestic ecosystem. The India Semiconductor Mission has created policy momentum, but the discussion highlighted the longer time horizon required to build an ecosystem of this complexity. Capital, R&D incentives, talent and integration with global supply chains remain important pieces of the puzzle.
Consumer electronics can play an important role in pulling that ecosystem forward. Building Indian brands across areas such as mobile devices, audio, mobility and IT can create domestic demand for locally developed technology while giving manufacturers a pathway to scale.
That makes semiconductors more than a component story. The larger ambition is to connect design, manufacturing, consumer demand and intellectual property into an ecosystem capable of supporting India's next generation of electronics and high-tech industries.
The third conversation moved from individual sectors to the broader capabilities required to make India a manufacturing hub.
Dr. Bharat Kaushal, Corporate Officer, Hitachi and Executive Officer, Hitachi India, and Vivek Abrol, MD & CEO, Luminous Power Technologies, joined moderator Shivani Bazzaz, Special Correspondent, CNBC-TV18, to discuss the technology, talent and capital required to build globally competitive manufacturing businesses.
India already has a substantial manufacturing talent base. The question is whether that talent is equipped for the next level of manufacturing excellence, where technology becomes an embedded part of the production system.
That requires a stronger culture of learning—one in which engineers and organisations are willing to look beyond India, understand how more mature manufacturing ecosystems operate and bring those lessons back into domestic industry.
The company’s experience in solar manufacturing illustrates how international exposure can accelerate technological learning. The objective is not to copy what another country has built, but to understand the technology and manufacturing discipline behind it, adapt those lessons and create capabilities suited to India's requirements.
That learning also feeds into Luminous' development of connected inverters, which give consumers greater visibility into how much solar energy is being generated, consumed and transferred to the grid.
The conversation also broadened the energy discussion beyond solar manufacturing itself.
EVs and semiconductors may be among the most visible areas of India's manufacturing push, but both depend on a larger energy ecosystem. Power generation, transmission, pricing, storage, solar panels, inverters and battery-management systems are becoming increasingly important to industrial competitiveness.
The Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana was discussed as an example of how the energy transition can affect both consumers and manufacturers. For households, rooftop solar can change electricity costs; for industry, the implications extend into the cost structure and productivity of the business.
The larger point is that energy management is no longer peripheral. It is becoming part of the core industrial model, with the ecosystem around solar, inverters, batteries and storage increasingly important to India's manufacturing roadmap.
If India is going to build these capabilities, the question of where capital goes becomes equally important.
The discussion highlighted railways and energy as major areas of opportunity, spanning railway modernisation, urban mobility, high-speed rail, grid management, transmission, automation and energy storage. The issue is not simply how much capital is deployed, but whether it is being allocated towards investments that improve productivity and long-term competitiveness.
That is where technologies such as generative AI and condition monitoring enter the manufacturing equation. AI can potentially reduce energy losses, improve predictive maintenance and optimise existing assets, but the investment case still has to be measured against the productivity gains it can actually deliver.
The broader message is that India's manufacturing build-out cannot rely only on subsidies or capacity creation. Capital has to improve the underlying economics of production.
As manufacturing becomes more technology-intensive, the distinction between physical products and software is also becoming less clear.
At Luminous, the integration of software, firmware and hardware has changed the way products are designed and manufactured. Connected inverter systems, for example, require different product models to work through a common technological layer rather than relying on entirely customised manufacturing processes.
The company uses end-of-line testing to test the hardware and software together, ensuring that products leaving the factory meet the required performance and quality standards. Standardisation therefore becomes essential to controlling cost, improving optimisation and maintaining consistency at scale.
The same challenge is emerging in sectors such as railways, where legacy systems have to operate alongside increasingly modernised digital infrastructure. As software becomes embedded into physical systems, manufacturing discipline increasingly has to encompass both.
The conversations ultimately returned to the question of how quickly India can close the productivity and technology gap with more mature manufacturing economies.
China was an important reference point, particularly for its standardisation, manufacturing productivity, speed of product development and sustained investment in technology. But the lesson is not to reproduce China's model wholesale.
India also has a distinctive advantage in its domestic market. The country's population scale, affordability and changing consumption patterns provide manufacturers with an opportunity to develop products for India while building capabilities that can eventually serve global markets.
Productivity gains will require greater standardisation; resilience will require sustained investment; and technological catch-up will require capital that can stay invested through longer development cycles.
The discussions pointed to a manufacturing opportunity that is broader than any single sector.
In solar, India has to move deeper into the value chain. In semiconductors, it has to build an ecosystem spanning design, fabrication, packaging, IP and demand. And across manufacturing more broadly, it has to develop the talent, technology, energy infrastructure and capital discipline required to make those capabilities productive at scale.
India has the market, policy momentum and industrial ambition to become a larger manufacturing economy. The next question is whether it can build enough technological depth, supply-chain resilience and manufacturing productivity to turn that scale into a durable competitive advantage.
As the discussions at MAKE 2026 made clear, the next manufacturing phase will not be defined simply by how much India makes, but by how much capability it builds while making it.
The pages slugged ‘Brand Connect’ are equivalent to advertisements and are not written and produced by Forbes India journalists.
First Published: Aug 31, 2026, 22:45
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