India ‘on cusp of change’ as global manufacturers look beyond China
- US-China rivalry is providing a tailwind, and India will be a big beneficiary as companies move toward a ‘China-plus-one’ strategy, supply chain analysts say
- Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign kicked off in 2014, seeking to emulate China and the tigers of East Asia – like Singapore and South Korea
India’s economic transformation is kicking into high gear.
Global manufacturers are looking beyond China, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stepping up to seize the moment. The government is spending nearly 20 per cent of its budget this financial year on capital investments, the most in at least a decade.
Modi is closer than any predecessor to being able to claim that the nation – which may have just passed China as the world’s most populous – is finally meeting its economic potential. To get there, he’ll have to wrestle with the drawbacks of its exceptional scale: the remnants of the red tape and corruption that have slowed India’s rise, and the stark inequality that defines the democracy of 1.4 billion people.
“India is on the cusp of huge change,” said Nandan Nilekani, a founder of Infosys, one of the nation’s largest technology services companies. India has quickly created capacity to support tens of thousands of start-ups, a few billion smartphones and data rates that rank among the lowest in the world, he said.
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India facing an urban boom as infrastructure struggles to keep up
US-China rivalry is providing a tailwind. India and Vietnam will be the big beneficiaries as companies move toward a “China-plus-one” strategy, supply chain analysts say. Apple’s three key Taiwanese suppliers have won incentives from Modi’s government to boost smartphone production and exports. Shipments more than doubled to top US$2.5 billion of iPhones from April through December.