For many Asian electronics component suppliers, India is no longer unfamiliar territory. Sales teams visit regularly. Distributors are appointed. Memorandums are signed.
Yet a familiar frustration persists: Progress feels slower than expected. Engagements stall. Relationships churn. Quietly, and often conveniently, the verdict is reached—India is difficult, and India is a low-price market.
That conclusion is comforting—and wrong. What many Asian suppliers are encountering is not India’s resistance but their own misreading of how India functions as a market.
The gap is not primarily about technology capability, cost competitiveness or policy uncertainty. It is about engagement models shaped by export-era assumptions that no longer apply.
For decades, much of Asia’s electronics ecosystem—particularly in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China—has been optimized around efficiency and velocity. Markets were either export destinations or manufacturing hubs. Engagements were transactional. Timelines were compressed. Success was measured by how quickly volumes ramped and margins scaled.
India does not conform neatly to this logic. India today is neither an early-stage electronics market nor a pure export base. It is evolving into a demand-led system market, where scale builds through accumulation, not acceleration.
Domestic electronics production has crossed roughly $120 billion annually, driven by multiple demand engines: smart meters, automotive and EV electronics, renewable energy systems, telecom infrastructure, white goods and industrial automation.
Layered decisions are not slow decisions
Asian suppliers often approach India expecting quick validation: a distributor appointment, a few design-ins, early price negotiations. When momentum does not materialize within familiar regional timelines, confidence erodes. Resources rotate. Attention shifts elsewhere.
What gets missed is that India’s decision cycles are not slow; they are layered. Decisions are distributed across engineering, procurement, manufacturing and, increasingly, system-level ownership. Authority is rarely concentrated in a single individual. Alignment takes time because failure costs are high and visible.
At the same time, this layered structure also places responsibility on Indian design teams. Some programs continue to rely on component choices made a decade ago, even as system requirements, reliability expectations and global supplier capabilities have evolved.
Design teams that periodically reassess their component baselines and remain open to proven, leading alternatives tend to shorten future qualification cycles and strengthen long-term system resilience.
Low-price market myth
One of the most persistent misconceptions among Asian suppliers is that India is fundamentally a low-price electronics market. Production bills of materials (BOMs) tell a different story.
Across automotive electronics, smart meters, industrial systems, power electronics and white goods, the most critical BOM positions are already dominated by Tier 1 global suppliers. Market-leading MCUs, MLCCs, MOSFETs, analog ICs and connectors occupy the design anchor points.
These components are not selected because they are cheap but because they are proven, qualified, reliable and supported across long life cycles. Indian original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and electronics manufacturing services (EMS) players are managing system risk, not chasing the lowest price.
Availability, field performance, qualification depth and supply continuity matter more than headline pricing, which typically matures over time as volumes stabilize.
The missing middle: proven reference designs
Another frequent misreading lies in how Asian suppliers approach design engagement. Many arrive with strong components but limited system context, expecting Indian customers to architect complete solutions and absorb integration risk. While this may work in mature Asian markets, in India it often slows adoption.
What India increasingly needs are proven design reference solutions, not just parts. Reference designs already deployed and validated in China, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan can materially shorten India’s time to market by reducing design and qualification risk.
An air-conditioner motor-drive platform, a smart-meter power-supply design qualified for compliance, a microinverter control card proven in the field, or a BLDC motor-drive control card validated across multiple OEM programs provides a known operating envelope.
These are not generic evaluation boards but system-level references with defined specifications and deployment history. For Indian OEMs and EMS firms under pressure to deliver reliably at scale, such references reduce uncertainty, accelerate alignment and compress qualification cycles.
In India, credibility is often established during early, low-volume engagements, long before formal volume commitments appear.
Why “free-for-all” sales models struggle in India
Another common misstep lies in sales structure. Some Asian suppliers allow multiple international sales teams to handle India simultaneously, creating an approach that resembles telesales rather than a disciplined one-market, one-account-manager model.
India is fundamentally an account-based, design-registration-driven market. Customers expect clarity on ownership, accountability and protection of effort. When multiple representatives engage the same account without coordination, confusion follows, trust erodes and internal alignment slows.
Local distributors feel this most acutely. They invest in demand creation, design-in effort and engineering support, yet often see little protection for their work, weakening motivation over time.
A more effective model, already common among many Western suppliers, relies on a single empowered India manager, clear account ownership, disciplined demand creation and transparent design-registration policies. One voice to the customer. One path to qualification.
India is price-aware, but lifecycle-driven.
Initial price matters, but so do availability, engineering support, response time and willingness to stand by a design when conditions change. In automotive, power electronics and infrastructure systems, lifecycle stability routinely outweighs marginal price differences.
Suppliers who chase entry through aggressive pricing often weaken their own position. Those who anchor on reliability, continuity and design reuse earn pricing stability over time.
Engaging India…on its own terms
India is unlikely to converge toward a single Asian operating model. It is shaping its own.
The Asian suppliers who succeed in India tend to invest early in relationships, bring proven reference designs, enforce disciplined account ownership and commit through uncertainty rather than retreating at the first sign of friction.
India does not reward speed. It rewards resolve. Those who do not will continue to call India difficult and wonder why it never quite delivers.
R.D. Pai is a Singapore-based industry adviser and founder of Focalpoint Consultants, with more than three decades of experience across India and Asia’s electronics and semiconductor ecosystem.