PwC estimates India’s electronics manufacturing sector to reach $282 billion in size conservatively by 2030, as opposed to the $500 billion ambitioned by the Indian government. This growth will be driven by the mobiles and wearables segment accounting for $160 billion of their estimated value, said PwC.
The company described India as “a melting point of a lot of investments,” owing to its horizontal approach that enables many industries. However, it estimated growth to vary depending on whether central and state governments deliver on infrastructure and other projections. The PwC report estimated that even if there is a moderate growth India will touch $418 billion and even conservative estimates show robust expansion.
Growth to vary from $282-418 billion
“Even if it’s not $500 billion, 2.8 times of growth in six years is also quite something. All major brands in India are trying to do something more in terms of investment. We’re seeing tremendous amount of interest from infrastructure developers, data centres and electronics component manufacturing,” said Sujay Shetty, Executive Director – ESDM and Semiconductors, PwC India, adding in a presentation that other sectors are expected to have sluggish capex increase, slowing down growth.
Largest contributor to GDP
He explained this will be comparable to the auto sector, making it the largest sector by 2030. Electronics could even be one of the largest contributors to the GDP that will come out from the manufacturing sector, said Shetty. For this, mobile and wearables will have to lead India. The segment is already the second largest smartphone market. Researchers also pointed out how Apple has been trying to think about expanding its investments in India.
Leading IT hub
Similarly India is a hub for the information technology segment. The market is expected to reach $32 billion by 2030 and demand for data servers could rise by 10 times owing to technological changes. In terms of telecom, PwC noted 60 times the growth in data traffic in the last five years and more than 65 per cent data revenue is expected from 5G services by 2026.