India’s Manufacturing Surge: A Decade-Defining Opportunity
India’s industrial economy is in the midst of a structural expansion that few markets can match. With GDP growth projected at 7.6% for FY 2025-2026 and manufacturing posting a 4.3% year-on-year increase as of March 2026, the country’s factory sector is no longer just a domestic story, it is a global investment theme.
According to the figures cited by IBEF and MoSPI, the share of manufacturing in India’s GDP is currently at about 17%, while accounting for more than 77% of overall industrial output in the country. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) increased from 166.3 a year ago to 173.2 in March 2026, which is attributed to constant growth in capital goods, metals, vehicles, and construction sectors. Overall, within manufacturing, 14 out of 23 sectors experienced growth.
The momentum around capital investments continues to increase rapidly. Private corporate CAPEX inflows indicate that the manufacturing industry accounted for more than 50 percent of total investment activities. The FDI inflow in India was recorded at US$ 1.14 trillion during April 2000 to December 2025. Policy efforts continue to play a crucial role with the PLI scheme covering 12 different sectors releasing INR 23,946 crore by September 2025. Moreover, the NMM program which was launched in Union Budget 2025-26 aimed to enhance the contribution of the manufacturing industry to 25 percent of the GDP by 2035.
A few of the critical sectors with high priority include semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, electric vehicles, specialty steel, food processing, and defense manufacturing. The ambition involved is indeed enormous. However, the project execution issues associated with it are equally significant.
Project Execution Gaps: The Hidden Cost of Industrial Growth
Behind each of these projects lies an equally challenging execution process that is often overlooked. The growth of manufacturing in India is now generating more need than ever for skilled project management, but the problem of bridging the gap between commitment and implementation continues to plague the industry.
Manufacturers and industrial developers in India today face a compound set of challenges:
- Cost and schedule overruns arising from fragmented project management, disconnected engineering and procurement functions, and inadequate vendor oversight during construction and commissioning.
- Technology selection risk, where capital is committed to process configurations that are misaligned with raw material availability, utility constraints, or offtake requirements.
- Regulatory complexity, including a multi-layered statutory clearance environment that spans environmental consents, factory approvals, fire and safety certifications, and sector-specific regulatory filings across central and state jurisdictions.
- ESG and sustainability compliance pressures that are intensifying in both domestic and export market contexts, with SEBI’s BRSR Core assurance obligations now extending to the top 500 listed entities for FY 2025–26.
- Investor due diligence requirements that demand detailed technical, financial, and operational validation before project finance or equity participation can be structured.
These execution gaps are not incidental. They represent structural inefficiencies in the industrialization value chain, and they disproportionately affect first-time industrial investors, MSMEs scaling into new sectors, and multinational companies navigating India’s regulatory terrain for the first time.
IMARC Engineering: Integrated Industrial Advisory for India’s Growth Sectors
IMARC Engineering, headquartered in Noida, India, has announced the expansion of its integrated EPCM, ESG compliance, and plant setup advisory services to address the full spectrum of challenges facing manufacturers, investors, and industrial developers across India’s priority growth sectors.
The company’s expanded service platform spans four interconnected practice areas:
- EPCM Services: End-to-end project delivery spanning conceptual engineering, detailed design, equipment procurement, vendor management, construction supervision, and commissioning for greenfield and brownfield manufacturing facilities.
- ESG Compliance and Sustainability Advisory: Emissions baselining, carbon footprint assessment, BRSR and GRI reporting support, CBAM readiness, renewable energy integration planning, and sustainability management system design aligned with SEBI, MoEFCC, and BEE frameworks.
- Statutory and Regulatory Compliance: Environmental impact assessments, consent to establish and operate filings, factory act compliances, fire NOCs, pollution control board submissions, and sector-specific regulatory filings across central and state jurisdictions.
- Industrial Advisory Services: Techno-economic feasibility studies, technical due diligence support for investors and lenders, greenfield manufacturing project advisory, brownfield plant expansion consulting, technology benchmarking, plant performance audits, factory modernization planning, and market entry advisory for companies entering or expanding across India’s industrial sectors.
IMARC Engineering supports projects across pharmaceuticals, food processing, chemicals, metals, packaging, electronics, EV battery manufacturing, renewable energy, consumer goods, and industrial infrastructure sectors.
Supporting India’s Greenfield and Brownfield Manufacturing Growth
The company’s multidisciplinary team combines expertise in process engineering, project management, industrial compliance, sustainability consulting, and manufacturing advisory to support both greenfield manufacturing projects and brownfield industrial expansion programs across India. The integrated approach helps manufacturers reduce execution risk, accelerate commissioning timelines, improve regulatory readiness, and optimize long-term operational performance.
“India’s manufacturing ambition is real, and the investment flows confirm it. What we see on the ground, however, is that capital commitment alone does not guarantee project success. Manufacturers are navigating simultaneous pressures: tighter ESG mandates from regulators and buyers, complex multi-agency clearance processes, and the execution demands of commissioning new facilities at speed. IMARC Engineering was built to bridge exactly this gap – bringing together rigorous engineering capability, on-ground compliance knowledge, and sector-specific advisory under a single integrated platform. Our expansion is a direct response to what India’s industrial sector needs at this pivotal moment in its growth journey.”
— Nakul Gupta, IMARC Engineering
Connect with Our Team: https://www.imarcengineering.com/contact-us
Positioned for India’s Industrial Next Phase
With PLI shifting towards Component Manufacturing Scheme and the National Mission on Manufacturing, launched by the Government, aiming at 25% GDP contribution by manufacturing to India’s economy by 2035, the next wave of the structural investment cycle in Indian manufacturing stands poised to start, where the cycle would be focused less on announcement and more on execution.
There also appears to be an evident rise in the sophistication of investors in terms of technical due diligence, ESG reporting and other regulatory risk assessments as investments flow into the sector, with private equity, infrastructure and multinational corporate strategic investors making increasing demands.
The integrated model that IMARC Engineering proposes for EPCM, sustainability compliance and industrial advisory take cognizance of this fact in totality by offering, to the investors, independent technical & commercial due diligence, and to the manufacturers, a single window approach, from conception of the project till its commissioning.
As India hurtles towards its manufacturing milestones of 2030 and sets its sights on its future vision for 2035, the distinction between projects that create value and those that erode value will soon come to lie solely in the competence of project management and advisories brought into play from day one.
