India gets ready to build its own Samsung, Vivo or Xiaomi

India's smartphone manufacturing revolution has a peculiar problem. India has built the factories, but it has not yet built a smartphone brand of global scale. Desi brands such as Lava and Micromax have failed to compete with Korean and Chinese brands such as Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme.

This gap is now the target of a Rs 62,500 crore Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme announced a few days ago, which offers incentives not just for making phones but for developing Indian-owned intellectual property, design and brands. Electronics minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said India could see its first strong indigenous mobile brand by mid-2027. The ambition is significant because India is attempting it after a decade in which Chinese brands have transformed the economics of the smartphone business.

From assembly hub to brand owner

India has already achieved what once looked like an impossible ambition. It is now the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer by volume and the government says 99.2% of mobile phones used in India are made domestically. Smartphones became India's largest individual export category in 2025.


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India's mobile phone exports have increased 165-fold over the past decade, rising from around Rs 1,500 crore in 2014-15 to about Rs 2.59 lakh crore in 2025-26. In a written reply in the Lok Sabha last month, Vaishnaw said mobile phone production has also expanded nearly 33 times during the period, from Rs 18,000 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 6.27 lakh crore in 2025-26.

The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing was crucial to this expansion. It encouraged Apple and its suppliers as well as Samsung and Chinese manufacturers to expand production in India. Apple's manufacturing and export ramp-up is the most visible result.

But this incredible success story has a gap. India is increasingly making smartphones that carry foreign brands but not its own.

Indian brands remain marginal in India's smartphone market despite the government's push to create a home-grown champion. Counterpoint Research's latest Q2 2026 data does not disclose a separate market-share figure for Lava, India's largest surviving Indian-owned smartphone brand, indicating how small domestic brands remain relative to the market leaders. Vivo and Samsung each held about 18% of shipments, followed by Oppo at 14% and Xiaomi at 13%, while Nothing, a UK-based brand, was the fastest-growing player with shipments jumping 105% year-on-year. The absence of an Indian-owned brand among the leading players is what the new Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme is designed to change.

Its second target segment offers Indian brands a 5% incentive on eligible sales, another 3% for Indian design and R&D and up to 1.5% more for domestic sourcing of key components and sub-assemblies. The scheme runs from FY2026-27 to FY2030-31.

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More important is the government's definition of an Indian brand. The company must be incorporated in India, own its IP and trademark in India, have management control with Indian citizens and have more than 51% Indian ownership. It must also possess in-house R&D and design capabilities in India. The minimum turnover requirement is ₹1,000 crore for FY2025-26.

This makes the scheme different from a conventional manufacturing subsidy. The government is trying to ensure that more of the value created by the smartphone industry belongs to Indian companies.

Why Micromax and Lava lost the first battle

India has been here before. Around 2015, Indian brands such as Micromax, Lava, Intex and Karbonn had a combined market share of roughly 35%. Micromax had become a serious challenger to Samsung. Then Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Realme changed the market.

The Chinese companies brought enormous manufacturing scale, sophisticated supply chains and aggressive pricing. They invested heavily in distribution and marketing while improving the specifications consumers received for their money. Indian brands struggled to keep pace with the speed of product launches, hardware development and software improvement. The combined share of Indian handset brands had fallen below 1% by the early 2020s.

This was not simply a story of Chinese companies selling cheaper phones. The very economics of smartphones had changed. A successful brand needed purchasing power with component suppliers, software expertise, camera and display engineering, a reliable retail network and enough sales volume to spread R&D costs.

Micromax and its peers did not have enough scale or technological differentiation when the competition intensified. The new opportunity is different because the ecosystem underneath the brand has changed.

Lava could be the test case

Lava is the clearest candidate to benefit from the new policy. It survived while most of India's earlier smartphone brands faded and has recently begun growing again, particularly at the lower end of the market. TOI reported in June that Lava had around 2% of India's smartphone market and was growing at 40-50% annually. It is targeting 10% of the sub-Rs 30,000 segment.

Its performance in the entry-level market is notable. Lava's shipments in the sub-Rs 10,000 category have reportedly been rising fast. Lava is also moving beyond simply assembling phones. It plans to invest around Rs 1,100 crore over five years in display modules, camera modules, PCBs and enclosures.

The broader manufacturing ecosystem has also become much deeper. Dixon Technologies, for instance, manufactures for brands including Motorola, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Realme. ET reported that it expected smartphone production of 40-44 million units in FY2026, rising to 60-65 million in FY2027. Dixon is primarily a manufacturing company rather than a consumer brand, but its rise illustrates an important change. Indian companies now possess manufacturing scale that did not exist when Micromax was at its peak.

Even Micromax's manufacturing arm, Bhagwati Products, remains relevant. It has planned two new factories in Greater Noida for smartphones, tablets, IoT devices and components through its joint venture with Chinese ODM Huaqin.

In other words, the old Indian smartphone story may have failed at the brand level while leaving behind a manufacturing base that can support the next attempt.

Can India actually create a global brand?

This is where the government's challenge lies. Factories can be built with capital and incentives but brand loyalty is harder to manufacture. Samsung, Xiaomi and Oppo have spent years developing relationships with suppliers, software capabilities, camera technologies and distribution networks. They also have enormous global volumes. An Indian company entering the market today cannot rely on millions of first-time smartphone buyers. India's annual smartphone market has largely stabilised around 150-160 million units, according to ET, meaning new brands increasingly have to take customers from established competitors.

A subsidy can help a company sell a phone but can't make consumers want that phone. This is why the 3% incentive for Indian design and R&D could prove more important than the headline 5% brand incentive. If companies use the scheme to develop their own software, camera processing, industrial design and patents, they can begin building capabilities that competitors cannot easily replicate.

There is also an export opportunity. Apple's experience shows what an export-oriented smartphone ecosystem can achieve. An Indian brand could therefore build on an ecosystem that already manufactures at global scale rather than starting from scratch.

That does not mean India needs to make every component. Samsung itself relies on a global supply chain. What matters is controlling the economically valuable parts of the product such as design, software, patents, product decisions and the brand.

The next five years will decide it

The government expects the new scheme to generate around Rs 39 lakh crore of cumulative mobile phone production and 60,000 direct jobs over its five-year tenure. Those numbers will be impressive, but they should not be the ultimate measure of the scheme.

India has already demonstrated that it can manufacture phones at enormous scale. The next test is whether an Indian-owned company can use that scale to create a product people choose because it is good rather than because it is Indian. Lava is the obvious candidate. Other manufacturers may emerge from the expanding domestic electronics ecosystem. Some may eventually combine Indian ownership with technology partnerships and global supply chains, just as successful electronics companies elsewhere have done.

The opportunity is considerably stronger today than it was when Micromax and Lava were fighting Samsung a decade ago. India now has scale, suppliers, export markets and manufacturing expertise. What it still needs is the final piece -- a company capable of turning those advantages into technology and a brand with enough pull to compete globally.

If the new scheme produces that company, India's smartphone success story will enter a new phase. India will no longer merely be where Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi or Oppo make their phones but will have a Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi or Oppo of its own.