Incentives, value addition boost made-in-India laptops

In March 2024, less than 5% of all laptops being sold in India were being assembled locally, analysts and industry executives said. As the Union government’s production-linked incentive scheme began rolling out benefits, electronics manufacturing services (EMS) firms have increased their bets on local laptop manufacturing.

“We already have a strong pipeline for our laptop assembly deals, and we have already struck deals with leading brands to locally make their laptops,” said Jasbir Singh Gujral, managing director of Mumbai-based EMS firm, Syrma SGS. “Overall, we expect that for global brands, nearly a third is being catered out of assembly lines in India, and the government-backed incentives play a major role in it.”

The government, in March 2023, rolled out a 5% incentive on incremental revenue from locally assembled laptops, as part of a ₹17,000-crore outlay over six years.

Now, more companies have started reaping the benefits.

“Laptops, tablets and IT hardware products: The segment saw a healthy uptick in revenues in the quarter, and we have a very strong order book for the next financial year and capacity enhancements going on,” Atul Lall, managing director of Dixon Technologies, told analysts in the company’s post-earnings analyst call on 29 January.

“Our dedicated IT hardware product manufacturing unit in Chennai has successfully stabilized MICE production of laptops and AIOs for HPs and Asus. We have bagged an order for desktops from one of our customers, and we will start manufacturing in Q4 of this fiscal in Chennai, and also, in active discussion with an existing customer for manufacturing tablets,” he added.

US-based laptop maker HP, India’s largest laptop seller, as well as Taiwan’s Asus, the fifth largest, have deals with Dixon Technologies to assemble laptops locally. Dell and Lenovo, ranked second and third, have captive units for local laptop assemblies, and are recipients of PLI incentives as well. Taiwan’s MSI and Japan’s Dynabook are also partnering with Manesar’s VVDN Technologies for laptop assemblies.

“Our manufacturing facilities in India, where we manufacture PC, tablets, servers, and Motorola phones, are part of our global manufacturing footprint of 30+ sites across 10 countries," a Lenovo India spokesperson said in reply to a Mint email seeking comment. "As demand rises, we continue to scale production from our own manufacturing facility at Pondicherry while investing and growing in alignment with our PLI commitments through our EMS partners.”

The move to venture into the laptop ecosystem comes at a time when India’s long-standing production-linked incentives on smartphones is set to end on 31 March, with an extension still awaiting clarity from the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity). Smartphones, the mainstay of revenue for India’s EMS firms, are also going through a slowdown.

In the December quarter, a slowdown in mobile phone demand led Dixon Technologies, India’s largest publicly listed EMS company, to report a 28% sequential decline in revenue. Over 65% of Dixon’s top-line depends on mobile phone sales.

HP, Acer and Asus did not reply to Mint’s emails seeking comment.

In India, smartphone sales have remained muted for nearly five years now. Laptops, on the other hand, are on the rise, registering a 13% year-on-year growth in domestic sales in 2025. The scales, however, are drastically different—while 152 million smartphones were sold in India last year, Mint reported on 10 February that laptop sales hit 11.5 million units in 2025, their highest annual sales to date.

“There is a definite uptick in local laptop shipments in the country, and all manufacturers are increasingly betting on this segment to capture government incentives at scale,” said Harshit Kapadia, vice-president at brokerage Elara Capital. “While the exact percentage of laptops being made locally is difficult to ascertain, as various brands have deals with different manufacturers, there is a significantly high volume of ‘made in India’ laptops in the market today.”

Going forward, Kapadia said that the percentage of India-made laptops will ‘only increase.’

“There is rising value addition through component localization that is currently playing out among laptops in India. Going forward, as localization and shipment volumes increase, value addition through local chip and other component sourcing will also go up,” Kapadia added.

Brands, too, acknowledged that the incentives for laptops have boosted local manufacturing. When asked about its exact impact, a spokesperson for Dell Technologies said, “Dell Technologies has been manufacturing in India for 18+ years, and we continue to work closely with the Indian government. We have been a part of the PLI scheme for IT hardware since the first phase, and we are currently participating in PLI 2.0 for laptops.”