Make in India completed twelve years on 25 September 2026. It was launched on 25 September 2014, and the Prime Minister marked the anniversary with a line that is a fair summary of the whole thing: more made in India, more investment in India, more exports from India.
Before the figures, one question that most notes never ask and that changes how you answer every question on this topic: how much money does Make in India spend? The answer is none. And that is not a criticism — it is what Make in India is.
The Hinge: It Is a Label on a Shelf, Not a Scheme
Make in India has no budget line, no beneficiary list and no application form. You cannot apply to Make in India. No company receives a Make in India payment. There is no Make in India office that sanctions anything.
What it is instead is an umbrella — a name placed over a group of separate schemes, rules and reforms that all point the same way. The money sits in the schemes underneath, not in the umbrella.
So here is the decoder, and it works across the whole syllabus:
| Ask this | If yes | If no |
|---|---|---|
| Does it have its own money? | It is a scheme or a yojana — there is an outlay, an eligibility rule and a sanctioning authority. PM-KISAN, PLI, PMAY | It is an initiative, a campaign or a mission that organises other things. Make in India, Digital India, Skill India |
Why this matters in an exam. Questions about Make in India are almost never about amounts, because there are none to ask about. They are about the launch date, the number of sectors, the administering ministry and which schemes sit under it. Questions about PLI, by contrast, are full of figures. Knowing which kind of thing you are looking at tells you which kind of question is coming.
What It Set Out to Do
Make in India was announced by the Prime Minister on 25 September 2014 and is administered by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, through the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade. Its guiding phrase was ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’, and its three working aims were to facilitate investment, foster innovation and develop infrastructure.
| Then and now | Detail |
|---|---|
| Sectors at launch, 2014 | 25 |
| Sectors under Make in India 2.0 | 27 — 15 manufacturing and 12 services |
| The target | Raise manufacturing to 25% of GDP, originally by 2022, later shifted to 2025 |
| The logo | A striding lion made of cogwheels — machinery and strength in one image |
Note the 25 to 27 change. Older material says 25 sectors, current material says 27 under Make in India 2.0. Both are right for their moment, and the safe answer in 2026 is 27, split 15 and 12.
Where the Money Actually Is: PLI
If Make in India is the shelf, the Production Linked Incentive schemes are the biggest item on it.
PLI works on a simple principle that is worth stating in plain words: the government pays a company a percentage of what it actually produces and sells, over and above a baseline. Not a grant for building a factory, not a tax holiday for existing, but an incentive linked to output. Produce nothing, receive nothing.
- PLI covers 14 sectors — among them electronics, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and auto components, textiles, food processing, telecom, white goods, drones and advanced chemistry cell batteries.
- PLI schemes have supported more than ₹15.5 lakh crore of exports and are credited with about 14.6 lakh jobs.
That output-linked design is the most examinable idea in Indian industrial policy right now, because it is a deliberate break from the older habit of subsidising inputs. Two of the clearest cases are in posts we have already written: the Mobile Phone Manufacturing Scheme, and the Semiconductor Mission, which brought a whole new industry under the same umbrella.
Twelve Years in Figures
From the Government’s own backgrounder of 24 September 2026:
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Cumulative FDI, 2014-15 to 2025-26 | USD 843 billion — about 169% more than the twelve years before it |
| Mobile phone production | From about ₹18,900 crore to about ₹6.3 lakh crore — roughly 32 times |
| Defence production | From ₹46,429 crore in 2014-15 to about ₹1.78 lakh crore in 2025-26 — about 283% up |
| Manufacturing GVA growth | 10.88% compound annual growth between 2022-23 and 2025-26 |
| Jobs under PLI | About 14.6 lakh |
| Exports under PLI | More than ₹15.5 lakh crore |
GVA — Gross Value Added — is simply the value a sector adds to the economy: what it produces, minus what it bought in to produce it. It is the cleaner way to measure one industry, which is why manufacturing is reported in GVA rather than in GDP. Our GDP explainer sets out how the two fit together.
The Second Hinge: Read the Target and the Report in the Same Units
This is the most useful thing in the post, and it is a habit rather than a fact.
The target was stated as a share: manufacturing to reach 25% of GDP. The twelve-year progress report is stated in absolutes: rupees crore of production, dollars of FDI, lakhs of jobs, percentage growth in GVA.
Those are different units, and the difference is the whole story. Manufacturing can grow a great deal in absolute terms — and every figure in the table above is real growth — while still not growing faster than the rest of the economy. If services and agriculture grow at a similar pace, manufacturing’s share of GDP barely moves, however large the rupee numbers get.
So the rule: whenever a target is set as a share and the progress report is given in absolute numbers, the share has probably not moved. That sentence is worth more in a descriptive answer than any single statistic, and it applies far beyond this scheme.
State it fairly, though. The honest position is that output, investment and exports have all risen substantially, and the 25% share target has not been met. Both halves belong in the answer.
Why a Manufacturing Push at All
Worth one short paragraph, because it explains why every government of the last thirty years has tried some version of this.
India’s economy skipped a step. Most countries move from farming to factories to services. India moved largely from farming to services, and services — software, finance, telecom — employ far fewer people per rupee earned than factories do. Manufacturing is the part of the economy that can absorb a large number of people with modest formal education. That, and not national pride, is the reason the share of GDP target exists at all.
It is also why a trade agreement and a manufacturing push are two halves of one policy: a duty-free export market is worth nothing if there is nothing to send, which is the point we made from the other direction in our India–New Zealand FTA explainer.
What Is Likely to Be Asked
- Launched 25 September 2014, by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
- 25 sectors at launch; 27 under Make in India 2.0 — 15 manufacturing and 12 services.
- The target of 25% of GDP from manufacturing, originally by 2022 and later 2025.
- The logo is a lion made of cogwheels.
- ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’ is the guiding phrase.
- PLI covers 14 sectors and pays on output, not on investment.
- Cumulative FDI of USD 843 billion over 2014-15 to 2025-26.
- That Make in India is an initiative, not a funded scheme.
Five Practice Questions
Q1. Make in India was launched on…
(a) 15 August 2014 (b) 25 September 2014 (c) 1 April 2015 (d) 25 September 2015
Answer: (b) 25 September 2014 The anniversary is marked every year on that date, which is why it appears in current affairs each September.
Q2. How many sectors does Make in India 2.0 cover?
(a) 14 (b) 25 (c) 27 (d) 57
Answer: (c) 27 Fifteen manufacturing sectors and twelve services sectors. Twenty-five was the figure at launch in 2014, and fourteen is the number of PLI sectors.
Q3. The Production Linked Incentive scheme pays a company on the basis of…
(a) the land it buys (b) the capital it invests (c) incremental output and sales (d) the number of graduates it hires
Answer: (c) incremental output and sales That output link is the deliberate break from older industrial policy, which subsidised inputs. Produce nothing and you receive nothing.
Q4. What was Make in India’s target for manufacturing as a share of GDP?
(a) 15% (b) 20% (c) 25% (d) 30%
Answer: (c) 25% Twenty-five per cent, first set for 2022 and later shifted to 2025. The target is stated as a share, which is why absolute production figures do not by themselves show whether it has been met.
Q5. Which ministry administers Make in India?
(a) Ministry of Commerce and Industry (b) Ministry of Finance (c) Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (d) Ministry of Heavy Industries
Answer: (a) Ministry of Commerce and Industry Specifically the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade within it. The other three ministries run schemes that sit under the same umbrella but do not administer it.
Ten more questions on this and today’s Static GK capsule are waiting on our Test Your Knowledge page, with a free PDF.
Sources: the Prime Minister’s Office release of 25 September 2026 marking twelve years (PIB Release ID 2314684); the PIB backgrounder on Make in India dated 24 September 2026, which carries the FDI, production, employment and export figures quoted above; and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry release of 25 September 2024 on the tenth anniversary. The 25% of GDP target and its shift from 2022 to 2025 are drawn from published accounts of the initiative; the Government’s own twelve-year report states progress in absolute terms rather than as a share of GDP, and this post says so rather than inferring a figure.
