India could have its own globally recognised smartphone brand by 2028, with fully Indian-designed, Indian-manufactured and Indian-branded handsets entering the market, according to Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, NDTV reported.

Speaking at the NDTV World Summit in New Delhi on 23 October 2026, the minister made a bold prediction, declaring: “This is 23 October 2026. Please note it: 23 October 2028. You will have Indian-designed, Indian-manufactured, Indian-branded mobile phones.”

Explaining the scale of the challenge, Vaishnaw highlighted the extraordinary complexity involved in designing modern smartphones. Using a mobile phone as an example, he noted that engineers must integrate radio-frequency communications, antennas, computing systems, memory, passive components, camera modules, displays and power-management systems into an extremely compact device.

“In this small little real estate you have to have radio frequency communication. You have the antenna, compute, memory, all the passive components, a camera module, a display, and power management,” he said. He added that balancing weight, power efficiency and performance within such a limited form factor makes smartphone design highly sophisticated.

The minister revealed that around three years ago the government challenged Indian engineers and technology firms to design the printed circuit board (PCB), effectively the motherboard of a smartphone. According to him, two companies accepted the challenge, with one producing a design of sufficient quality to be selected by a major United States telecommunications service provider.

He said the company subsequently secured a contract and successfully designed and delivered a 5G-plus smartphone for one of the largest telecom operators in the United States. The device has already been manufactured and supplied to customers, demonstrating that Indian companies have acquired advanced handset-design capabilities in a relatively short period.

According to Vaishnaw, this progress has helped India develop critical intellectual property and design expertise over the past three-and-a-half years. He said the next stage is to leverage those capabilities to create Indian brands that retain design ownership and intellectual property within the country.

“Now we will use that capability to have the Indian brand, Indian design, and Indian IP retained in India and that mobile phone will be one of the largest-selling,” he said.

The minister also linked the growth of India’s manufacturing sector to broader economic policy changes. He argued that restrictive regulations under previous Congress-led administrations constrained manufacturing growth, while economic liberalisation from the 1990s created opportunities for expansion. He claimed that manufacturing momentum accelerated again after 2014 through the government’s Make in India initiative.

Vaishnaw said India’s industrial transformation is now visible across multiple advanced sectors, including mobile phones, drones, missiles, railway systems and high-technology equipment.

Pointing to the country’s export performance, he noted that electronics has emerged as one of India’s strongest export categories. He said electronics is currently the nation’s third-largest export segment, a development that would have been difficult to imagine little more than a decade ago when India was largely viewed as an electronics importer.

The minister expressed confidence that electronics exports will continue to rise rapidly and could soon become India’s second-largest export category, reflecting the country’s expanding role in global technology manufacturing and supply chains.

His comments come as India continues to attract significant investment in electronics production, with government initiatives aimed at strengthening domestic design capabilities, boosting value addition, developing semiconductor and component ecosystems, and moving the country beyond assembly towards ownership of technology, brands and intellectual property.

Agencies