…by Mukesh Vasani, Founder & Chairman, Aimtron Electronics
India wants to become a global manufacturing power. This is no longer just a government goal. It is now an economic need. India has a young, growing workforce and a fast-changing industrial base. So, the real question is not whether manufacturing can create jobs. It is whether manufacturing can become the country’s biggest job creator. The answer depends on moving beyond simple, low-margin assembly work. India needs to build strength in complex, high-value manufacturing instead.
The jobs imperative
India needs large numbers of good jobs. The economy must create millions of jobs every year for its young workforce. Manufacturing can do this better than most sectors. It creates work for both semi-skilled and highly skilled people. A worker can start as a shop-floor technician and grow into a design engineer. As electronics manufacturing scales up, industry estimates suggest it could add close to 12 million jobs by 2027 on its own. Growth like this also creates jobs beyond the factory floor, in logistics, component supply, and services.
The high-value opportunity
For too long, India’s manufacturing story has been about volume and low cost. The next ten years need to be about skill and complexity instead. This is where Electronics System Design and Manufacturing, or ESDM, matters most. In complex sectors like aerospace, electric vehicles, and medical devices, the strongest jobs come from precision PCB assembly, prototyping, testing, and full product assembly. These jobs need discipline, good engineering judgement, careful tracking, and consistent quality.
These are not ordinary, low-skill jobs. They need real skill, and they pay better, build technical ability, and strengthen India’s industrial base. When design, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing happen together in one place, the jobs created are stronger and more valuable.
This kind of growth is easy to see up close. A young ITI graduate can join an ESDM line as a PCB assembly operator. Within a few years, they can move into testing and quality work, and then into design-support roles, working with engineers on things like a medical monitor’s controller board or an EV battery management system. I have seen this happen more than once on our own shop floors. An operator who once worked at a solder station now signs off on test reports for boards going to aerospace and medical customers abroad. That is the quiet promise of high-complexity ESDM. It does not just create a job. It builds a ladder.
Policy momentum
Policy and market conditions are now working in manufacturing’s favour. India wants to raise manufacturing’s share of GDP to 25% by 2035. The Semicon India Programme alone has already drawn investment commitments of over ₹1.6 lakh crore. More recently, the Large-Scale Electronics Manufacturing scheme has brought in over ₹15,000 crore in investment and generated more than 1.7 lakh new jobs. Over the last decade, India’s domestic electronics production has grown nearly five times, and exports have grown six times to about $48 billion. Alongside this, global supply chains are spreading beyond one or two countries, and India is increasingly seen as a trusted place for mid-to-high complexity manufacturing.
This shift matters because jobs will not come from simple assembly alone. They will come from building deeper skills in testing, certification, product engineering, quality systems, and supply-chain management. These skills create jobs that are harder to replace and easier to grow.
What must change
For manufacturing to become India’s biggest job creator, three changes are needed. First, India must move from assembly-led growth to design-led manufacturing. More product design, embedded engineering, firmware, and system architecture work should happen in India, alongside production. Second, India must move from general manufacturing to mission-critical sectors like aerospace, EV systems, industrial electronics, and medical devices. These sectors need strong reliability and compliance, which builds a long-term edge. Third, India must move from random, one-off skilling efforts to structured talent pipelines. This needs industry, engineering colleges, polytechnics, and vocational training centres to work together.
India does not lack demand, drive, or technical talent. The India Skills Report 2026 puts overall employability at 56.35%, which shows real progress but also how much room there still is to grow. [6] What it needs now is better alignment between policy support, industrial capability, and a ready workforce. That alignment is where the next wave of manufacturing jobs will come from.
The road ahead
Manufacturing can become India’s biggest job creator. But the quality of these jobs matters more than the total number. The real opportunity is in creating high-value roles in engineering, precision manufacturing, prototyping, testing, and system integration. If India builds for complexity, not just scale, manufacturing will do more than create jobs. It will create careers, grow exports, and strengthen India’s place in global supply chains.
For those of us working in high-complexity ESDM, this is how growth should be measured. Not just in units produced, but in the number of meaningful, high-value jobs created in India for the world.
