The government has prepared a roadmap to launch completely indigenous mobile handsets within the next two years, as the complete ecosystem for manufacturing components and design for these mobile phones is now in place.According to highly placed sources, the thought process had begun around three years ago. Despite the idea of developing completely Indian-made mobile handsets being “extremely difficult”, the Ministry for Electronics and IT managed to prepare the ecosystem for components manufacturing as well as for designing optics (features and appearance) for these proposed indigenous handsets. The government is now confident of rolling out these phones in the Indian market within the next two years.

"While the government is providing the ecosystem, certain private companies will be manufacturing these phones," sources said.

The aggressive push comes on the back of rapid expansion in India’s upstream electronics supply chain.

Official sources indicated that the government was seeking to capitalise on the recent success of its electronics component ecosystem to build out the full smartphone value chain — spanning industrial product design, software integration, research and development, and advanced manufacturing.

India’s component base has deepened substantially over the past few years, with an estimated 400 to 500 component manufacturers establishing operations across the country. Demonstrating this growing manufacturing muscle, Indian facilities have already exported smartphone parts and sub-assemblies worth approximately Rs 35,000 crore to China, marking a significant structural shift in the regional trade flows of electronics.