Industry 4.0 lays an unmissable opportunity for Indian manufacturing
By Mourad Tamoud
18 Jun 2025 • 4 min read
India’s potential as a manufacturing powerhouse has been well documented for more than 10 years. Back in 2012, McKinsey predicted India’s manufacturing sector could grow sixfold by 2025 to $1 trillion and create 90 million domestic jobs.
However, recently CNBC reported that India’s manufacturing has not reached the expected levels of growth. The Make in India scheme, launched in 2020, was expected to boost manufacturing to 25% of GDP by 2025, but has fallen short with manufacturing's share of GDP dropping to 14% in March 2025.
Source: World Bank
India can still become a world leader in sustainable manufacturing, but manufacturers will only turn competitive by investing in competitive technologies. Here, the benefits are immense — for profits, country, and planet.
20km south of Hyderabad, an industrial park offers a glimpse of what India’s manufacturing future might look like.
This is a Schneider Electric smart factory. It’s big, it’s modern, and it features the latest manufacturing technology. The World Economic Forum has designated it a sustainability lighthouse, meaning one of the most advanced factories on the planet — and one that lights the way for manufacturing of the future.
It’s one of several new factories that offer a powerful vision of what India can become: a manufacturing leader on the cutting edge of Industry 4.0. But India won’t glide toward this future on goodwill alone. It requires continual investment and path corrections.
You may know Industry 4.0 by its somewhat grander name — the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Broadly, this describes the deployment of powerful digital innovations that will make industry, technology, and societies more interconnected and prosperous.
Imagine a factory where AI analyzes historical sales data and market trends to predict demand. Autonomous robots roam the floor, ferrying components to wherever they’re needed. And all around, interconnected sensors control quality, feeding data to maintenance algorithms that can prevent a breakdown before it happens. This isn’t fantasy — the technology already exists. It’s happening in our Hyderabad factory, and it needs to spread all over India.
For manufacturing, Industry 4.0 serves a multitude of benefits. Among them: greater productivity, efficiency, flexibility, and improvement to the bottom line. But crucially, Industry 4.0 can power a company’s sustainability efforts. It lets factories radically optimize their operations, maximizing output while minimizing resource consumption and waste.
But how can India take advantage of Industry 4.0 to get its manufacturing sector back on track?
A development incorporating decarbonization
Firstly, we must consider India’s unique position in the global decarbonization tale. While the developed world must uproot decades or even centuries of legacy infrastructure, India can arc toward net zero at a much earlier stage.
An impactful influence
Secondly, India is growing fast, and it’s essential to do this right. India has overtaken China as the most populous country on the planet. Given the size of this economy and the workforce within, the choices that India makes will influence how global challenges are solved in the future.
And as India rises, so will its energy demand. Our research shows that the bulk of India’s energy demand growth by 2047, and through to 2070, is due to expanded manufacturing. What matters now is how India sustainably tackles this demand. For that, local companies must invest in Industry 4.0 technologies.
A well-funded Industry 4.0 will lift the country — unlocking a vast and skilled workforce and pairing it with frontier manufacturing technologies. This is how India can still become a leader on the world manufacturing stage.
Manufacturing in the future cannot look like manufacturing of the past. Our factory in Hyderabad represents a new India — one that has leapfrogged into global competitiveness and sustainability. And one that embraces new technologies.
The manufacturing of the future will be revolutionized by AI, transforming operations into intelligent, real-time ecosystems. It will unlock unprecedented transparency across performance metrics – such as quality and supply chain orchestration – while delivering precisely tailored insights to every level of the organization. This evolution will empower industries to anticipate challenges, act proactively, and shape a more agile, resilient, and responsive manufacturing landscape.
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