Innovation is India’s Only Path to Becoming a Global Superpower

The experience of India’s homegrown mobile phone brands offers a crucial lesson. Despite manufacturing success, Indian mobile companies remain confined largely to device assembly. High-value activities such as design, technology development, intellectual property (IP), and component innovation remain concentrated among companies in the US, Europe, and China.

Learning from Domestic Mobile Brands: The Missing Link

Companies like Lava, Micromax, and Intex once held a significant market share, but as low-cost Chinese manufacturers entered the market, they were unable to maintain their competitive edge.

Their business models relied heavily on distribution networks and market reach. As competition intensified and e-commerce expanded, these advantages rapidly eroded.

What was critically missing was a sustainable competitive safety shield -investment in R&D-that could deliver innovative products secured by patents, which could then be leveraged and licensed to scale the business.

If India is to transition from being merely a manufacturing destination to a global tech superpower, it must enable domestic companies to capture a larger share of value creation.

Moving Up the Value Chain

Access to standardized technologies is a necessary condition for growth, but it is not sufficient. Long-term competitiveness will depend on whether Indian companies can move beyond merely adopting technologies developed elsewhere to creating their own.

Contract manufacturing can be a commercially successful model, but it is not enough to drive innovation-led growth. The countries that dominate global tech markets do so because they own the underlying technologies.

The Way Forward: India Innovates 2026

In “India Innovates 2026,” Prime Minister Modi envisioned India evolving from a consumer of global solutions into a provider of them. Realizing that ambition requires a focused push toward developing technologies, commercializing patents, and designing products within India.

By creating and monetizing its own innovations rather than relying on those developed elsewhere, Indian companies can accelerate India’s transformation into an innovation-driven technology superpower.

Suresh Bahety

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