For international manufacturers, the case for India is no longer only about cost. As global value chains are redrawn, resilience, adaptability, compliance and diversification have become reasons in their own right to add Indian suppliers to a supply base. India’s manufacturing depth and competitive economics make it a serious option across many industrial categories.
Yet India sourcing programmes can disappoint, and rarely because the suppliers were not there. They disappoint because the capability was not found, validated or industrialised properly.
Five ways programmes go wrong
- Sourcing from a list. The long list is built from exporters who are easy to find, rather than suppliers with the right process capability.
- Comparing unlike quotes. Quotations with different scopes, tooling treatment and delivery terms are compared as if they were the same.
- Trusting capability claims. A foundry that quotes a machined casting may outsource the machining and the heat treatment. The capability sits in the sub-tier, and so does the risk.
- Underestimating industrialisation. Samples are approved, and then tooling, capacity and process control are left to take care of themselves before volume production.
- Nobody on the ground. Between visits from headquarters, small problems become late shipments.
What good looks like
A sound programme starts with a category-country assessment: which categories make sense to source from India, and why. It builds a long list beyond the obvious names, normalises quotations so they can be compared, and sets them against a should-cost and a landed total cost of ownership. It verifies process, quality system and capacity on site, follows the part through every process step including the sub-tier, and manages sampling, tooling, industrialisation and approval with the same discipline as a domestic programme. Then it keeps managing performance.
The value of India sourcing is decided less by the price in the first quotation than by the rigour of everything that follows it.
That is the work our India Sourcing Office does: an extension of your procurement and supplier-operations organisation, on the ground in India, from market mapping and RFQ to production readiness and beyond.