Why India
Why India is the new best place to outsource manufacturing and engineering
Cost
Labor and overhead costs are dramatically lower than in Western markets across all tiers of manufacturing. Raw materials costs are also considerably lower - especially if no Western market is involved in the production or distribution. Manufacturing costs in India are around a third the cost of comparable services in China, while quality of life for employees is typically better and doesn't involve the notorious factory dormitories associated with China.
Workforce
India has the largest population of any nation on earth and produces over a million engineering graduates annually. As a developing economy, India has fierce competition for employment, such that higher levels of engineering education are associated with every stage in the manufacturing process than is the case in Western countries — or other developing nations.
English
English is an official language of India and is taught extensively in primary and secondary education. Most Indian engineers speak, read, and write English fluently, and documentation associated with the manufacturing process is ordinarily in English.
Government
The government of India is currently placing a high priority on investment in manufacturing infrastructure. Policies such as Make in India and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) have committed tens of billions in US dollars (trillions of rupees) to manufacturing infrastructure investment.
Supply
India possesses comprehensive, integrated domestic supply chains from bottom to top, encompassing raw materials, metal casting and forging, precision machining, sheet-metal fabrication, plastics and injection molding, electronics and PCB assembly, automotive components, industrial machinery, and the specialized engineering knowledge and services to operate across the entire chain. Numerous manufacturing clusters exist across India with broad, interconnected capabilities both in traditional and state-of-the-art manufacturing, such as Pune, Rajkot, Coimbatore, Chennai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and the Delhi NCR region.
QC/Metrology
For manufacturing with strict quality and tolerances requirements, no compromise is required in inspection or verification from top-tier Indian suppliers. These suppliers employ the same advanced metrology, laboratory, and NDT processes used by top manufacturers worldwide, while India’s lower labor and operating costs make rigorous quality assurance and testing substantially more economical.
Standards
Manufacturing suppliers with global certifications required for various industries - such as ISO 9001, IATF 16949 (automotive), ISO 13485 (medical), and AS 9100 (aerospace) - are widely available in India.
Risk Mitigation
India is governed by a Western-style democracy, and Western relations with India are far less tense and hostile than relations with China. Procuring new manufacturing pipelines to India or duplicating existing pipelines protects against potential disruption and additional tariffs, while Indian manufacturing already has lower trade and tariff exposure than China — including Section 301 tariffs in Western markets.
Scalability
Many Indian suppliers are far more accommodating to small orders than Chinese mega-factories which expect massive volume thresholds, making India a far more suitable manufacturing source for SMBs. At the same time, tier-1 and tier-2 manufacturing suppliers can also accommodate enormous order volumes. Large corporations can thus source confidently in India, while SMBs can gain access to outsourced manufacturing at low volumes while having assurance that order volume can scale with the business's own growth.
Flexibility
An essential feature of the Indian manufacturing landscape is the prevalence of relatively small, flexible firms which are far more adaptable to ongoing reverse engineering, prototyping, and development processes and the numerous changes they require than Chinese mega-factories.
Integration
Leading Indian manufacturers operate with the same end-to-end digital integration—from CAD to final review—as their most sophisticated Western counterparts, allowing changes to cascade throughout the production process.
Engineering
India’s strength extends beyond build-to-print manufacturing - it is already a globally-favored destination for engineering services already intimately-connected with manufacturing capabilities.