After smartphone dominance, appliance makers set to dial in next electronics boom
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Kolkata: The smartphone industry may be the star of India's manufacturing incentive programme, but consumer electronics and home appliance manufacturers are now getting in on the act.Brands and contract manufacturers such as LG PG Electroplast and Epack Durable have lined up record investments of over Rs 13,000 crore to be executed over the next one-two years, according to executives. That's more than twice that of FY24 and FY25 put together. This excludes the investments most of them will make under the recently announced incentive scheme for electronic components, plans for which are still being finalised by the companies, the executives said.Chief executives said proposed investments will create capacities for both domestic and export markets to prepare for opportunities under the emerging tariff regime and backward integration into components. This is despite demand having been bleak for almost 10 quarters now, except for premium products.Amber Enterprises CEO Jasbir Singh said components such as printed circuit boards are asset-heavy business and without government incentives it did not make business sense to make such high investments until now. LG Electronics is investing Rs 5,001 crore in a new plant in Sri City in Andhra Pradesh.The Sri City plant will be LG Electronics' third unit in the country, having set up its last factory about two decades ago. This one will produce home appliances including ACs. Samsung meanwhile will be spending over Rs 1,000 crore to expand capacities at its plant in Tamil Nadu.Haier is making a fresh investment of Rs 800 crore in India to expand its AC production capacity with a new plant and it aims to start making PCBs. It's already invested about Rs 1,600 crore in India. In the last fiscal year, Haier spent Rs 200 crore, while the South Korean duo made no major manufacturing investments. Godrej Appliances has started trials of an AC compressor developed in-house and plans to set up a new plant to make it.Havells India will invest Rs 2,000 crore in the next two years on a new R&D centre and a refrigerator factory among other projects, the company told analysts on an earnings call. Its capital expenditure in the last fiscal year was Rs 800 crore. Capex over the next five years will far exceed what it's spent in the last 20 years, Havells managing director Anil Rai Gupta told ET. He said the company is also evaluating investment in components.The Make in India initiative, the Phased Manufacturing Programme and the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme helped transform mobile phone manufacturing in the country. India is now the world's second-biggest maker of these devices with more than 300 factories compared with two in 2014. The value of mobile phones manufactured has risen to Rs 4.22 lakh crore in FY24 from Rs 18,900 crore in FY14, as per the latest government data. The mobile phone PLI scheme alone attracted cumulative investment of Rs 10,905 crore till February 2025.In contrast, the investment in manufacturing of other electronic products such as televisions, home appliances, laptops and electronic components has lagged. The industry is said to be lobbying for a PLI scheme for refrigerators.Contract manufacturer Amber plans to invest Rs 2,000 in the next two fiscals on two PCB plants and other projects. Industry executives said Dixon aims to invest Rs 900-1,000 crore in FY25. PG Electroplast and Epack Durables want to more than double the investments they made last year. Company executives did not comment.The current high capex cycle across the electronics industry is aimed at building a component ecosystem and preparing for opportunities when consumption improves, said Vikas Gupta, MD—operations, PG Electroplast.
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