A ventilator shortage in the first months of COVID-19 exposed just how dependent India was on imported medical equipment. In February and March 2020, the country relied almost entirely on imported ventilators, which cost about ₹1.5 million each. When global demand surged, getting hold of basic critical-care equipment became a supply-chain problem.

India moved quickly. Within nine months, 36,433 ventilators with the Make in India logo had been delivered to government hospitals, reducing the price to between ₹200,000 and ₹1 million. This episode gave a sharp push to efforts that were already underway to build a domestic medical devices industry.

Six years later, that industry is considerably larger. The Department of Pharmaceuticals describes India as Asia’s fourth-largest medical devices market, after Japan, China and South Korea, and among the world’s top 20. Domestic manufacturers now operate across electro-medical equipment, implants, consumables and disposables, surgical instruments and in-vitro diagnostic reagents.

The bigger question is what India can make at the higher end of the technology curve.

Scaling Capacity

Government support has helped build the manufacturing base. The Production Linked Incentive scheme for medical devices has an outlay of ₹34.2 billion, with incentives running from 2022-23 to 2026-27. By December 2025, ₹1.57 billion had been disbursed to seven applicants. Twenty-four greenfield projects had been commissioned, production had started for 57 products, and cumulative eligible sales had reached ₹136.2 billion, including exports of ₹64.25 billion.

The industry is also becoming more geographically and commercially spread out. A 2023 Department of Pharmaceuticals cluster survey identified 736 operating units across 21 medical-device clusters, based on fieldwork conducted in 2022. A separate nationwide regulatory count put the number of licensed manufacturers at 4,108 as of March 2026.

The regulatory process is being tightened up as well. A draft notification issued by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in June 2026 proposed shorter and more clearly defined timelines for manufacturing licences. For low- to moderate-risk devices, the proposed timeline is 115 days, down from 140 days. For high-risk devices, it is 90 days, compared with 105 days currently.

Taken together, the numbers show an industry that has moved well beyond the emergency manufacturing response of 2020. But more factories and faster approvals do not necessarily mean more control over medical technology.

Technology Gap

That distinction becomes important as the industry moves into software-based medical devices, AI-enabled diagnostics, remote monitoring and advanced imaging. These are areas where the challenge is not simply to assemble or manufacture a product, but to develop the underlying technology and the components that make it work.

Much of India’s existing strength is still in relatively mature categories. High-technology devices and critical components continue to be imported. So, a device can be manufactured in India while some of its most important technology remains controlled elsewhere.

Exports show where domestic capability has grown fastest. DGCIS data show growth across most medical-device categories since 2020, although exports dipped slightly in 2026. Consumables and disposables, including syringes, catheters and surgical consumables, remain the largest export category. Exports rose from $1.4 billion in 2021-22 to $1.6 billion in 2025-26 year-to-date, accounting for nearly 43.4% of total medical-device exports.

Electro-medical equipment has also expanded, with exports rising from $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion over the same period. It accounted for about 40.7% of exports in the previous fiscal year. Implants have grown faster in percentage terms, increasing from $100 million to $300 million as Indian-made orthopaedic and speciality implants have found wider acceptance overseas.

In-vitro diagnostics, at around $200 million, and surgical instruments, at about $100 million, have remained broadly steady.

 

Segment-wise Exports of Medical Devices – India

Source: DGCIS, CareEdge Advisory, Note: * represents till February

The export numbers are encouraging, but they also show where India’s medical-devices industry is strongest today. Consumables and electro-medical equipment account for the bulk of exports, while the move into more sophisticated technologies is still a work in progress.

The more difficult picture emerges on the import side. India imported medical devices worth $8.8 billion in 2024-25, more than twice the value of exports. Rising exports and a larger licensed manufacturing base therefore signal greater domestic capability, but they do not yet amount to self-sufficiency.

There are also gaps in data on domestic production and investment, making it difficult to measure the industry’s true scale. Alongside these measurement challenges are structural constraints: continued dependence on imports for high-end devices, limited manufacturing capability at the technology frontier, relatively low R&D intensity and a fragmented industry comprising thousands of small manufacturers.

Digital healthcare integration could help bridge some of these gaps, particularly by embedding intelligent technology into affordable low-to-mid-technology devices and expanding access in Tier-II and Tier-III cities. But reaching the technology frontier will require deeper investment in R&D, stronger domestic supply chains and greater capacity to design and manufacture advanced systems and components.

India has travelled a considerable distance since the ventilator shortages of 2020. The next stage is harder. Technology sovereignty will not be achieved simply by producing more devices domestically. It will depend on whether India can progressively own more of the technology, components, intellectual property and capabilities that make those devices valuable.

The pandemic created the urgency. The next phase of development will determine whether India can turn that urgency into lasting technological capability.

(This article is published by arrangement with CARE Analytics and Advisory Private Limited)