Venttup ​unveils ​whitepaper to ​accelerate India as a ​global ​manufacturing ​hub

By Staff Report July 29, 2025 5:58 pm IST

Indigenisation startup Venttup launches India’s manufacturing growth story whitepaper at Kerala Innovation Festival. The report highlights the emergence of MaaS companies that have built a wide network of MSMEs to provide manufacturing solutions at scale. The report also points out the bottlenecks slowing the growth of the manufacturing sector. These include infrastructural deficits, a need for streamlined regulations, a required focus on enhanced skill development, and a more robust R&D network.

Venttup, a pioneering B2B manufacturing startup focused on driving indigenisation & new part development across industries, has launched a whitepaper titled ‘Building India’s manufacturing momentum’ at the Kerala Innovation Festival.

The whitepaper was launched by the Venttup team during the Kerala Innovation Festival in Kochi, in the presence of distinguished industry leaders, policymakers, professors, and mentors. The first copy of the whitepaper was handed over to guests, including Mamatha Venkatesh, Head of Start-up India; Dr. Lida Jacob IAS; Sridhar Radhakrishnan, Steering Committee Member of ASHA–Kisan Swaraj; Suresh Krishna, Co-Founder & CEO of the Yunus Foundation; Joseph Martin, CEO, Geojit–CUSAT Centre for Sustainability Studies; Jayaraman Chillayil, Managing Director of Equinoct; and Dr. Abhilash Sukumarapillai, Director of the Advanced Centre for Atmospheric Radar Research.

Venttup, founded by industry veterans with extensive experience at Hitachi Energy, Siemens Energy, L&T, and Kalpataru Power, Sandeep Nair (Co-Founder & CEO), M. Wasim Ankli (Co-Founder & COO), and Joseph Panakkal (Co-Founder & CMO), the white paper examines a substantive body of work, and has inputs from industry experts and founders in the manufacturing trenches to validate the findings.

Venttup focuses on localisation and sustainability, helping large and medium enterprises outsource engineering needs with India’s manufacturing expertise. The company produces high-quality, locally sourced components—from prototypes to mass production—customised for the Energy, EV, Aerospace, and Defence sectors. Venttup aims to create a unified platform for global buyers to access reliable and sustainable components from India, fostering self-reliance and sustainable growth in the manufacturing industry.

Sanddep Nair, Co-founder & CEO, Venttup, says, “India’s manufacturing ecosystem is dotted with millions of MSMEs who are the backbone of this sector. However, due to their lack of skills in end-to-end project management, cash flow limitations, R&D and lack of understanding of the latest tech capabilities, the growth of this sector has remained slow. The govt has been rolling out pro-manufacturing policies, but there is an urgent need for the private sector to partner with the government and other key stakeholders to build India into a global manufacturing hub across high-growth industries. With this whitepaper, we have attempted to highlight the strength areas where India has the leverage, manpower and the know-how to grow into a strong manufacturing destination for global buyers and provided recommendations on how this shift can be accelerated with the help of technology.”

Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “We have been big believers in India’s talent and capabilities to transform itself into a manufacturing destination for the world. Our investments in Venttup and engineering-driven startups is a testament to our strong belief in India’s emergence as a strong alternative to China in manufacturing. We strongly advocate that there is a need for developing manufacturing clusters within India as we take strategic steps to spotlight the prowess of India’s manufacturing landscape.

The key findings of the whitepaper include, emergence of MaaS companies, increasing preference of global aeronautical companies to establish manufacturing bases in India and China + 1 strategy that is driving the smart manufacturing wave by integrating MSMEs into the ecosystem at a scalable level.

Manufacturing as a Service

The advent of cloud manufacturing or MaaS has the potential to bring global buyers to Indian MSMEs. Currently, MSMEs contribute 45% of the country’s exports. However, most of the MSME-led manufacturing establishments employ minimal workforce and use obsolete machinery; they lack project management, lack of tech integration in workflows leads to losing out on valuable projects and limits MSMEs’ capabilities to focus on strategic issues. At times, capacity remains under-utilised, leading to a limited order pipeline. On the other hand, global buyers lack the expertise and network to source from the vast MSMEs. MaaS companies are filling this gap by becoming a much-needed bridge between global buyers and Indian MSMEs.

India is becoming an emerging hub for aircraft components

India is set to become a global hub for aircraft components manufacturing with a market size of $29.5 billion by 2033. Driven by govt initiatives like Make in India and Atmanirbhar Bharat, many SMEs are looking to invest in skilled manufacturing such as precision engineering, composite materials and semiconductor design and manufacturing. Global majors like Airbus and Boeing have announced partnerships with Mahindra and Tata to set up manufacturing operations in India. Indian PM Narendra Modi has presented a strong pitch to position India as a global hub for MRO to become a MRO 4 billion hub by 2030.

Conducive policy environment

India is taking all the right steps to accelerate the manufacturing sector’s growth. Pro-manufacturing policies like PLI have played a role in incentivising domestic manufacturing and have made India an attractive destination for global manufacturing giants. This shift is also a part of the global de-risking strategy of China + 1 post the pandemic.

Recommendations

India is in the right place at the right time to build itself into a position of strength in manufacturing. Given the country’s prowess in tech-led services and adoption of tech in every aspect, India, with its demographic dividend, has an edge in presenting itself as a hub for intelligent manufacturing, IoT, robotics, advances in AI and Quantum Computing. This will lead to India becoming a knowledge-enabled manufacturing industry where innovation will be the key differentiator.

Supplier ecosystem and strategic manufacturing corridor: India must focus on building sector-specific industrial clusters that support end-to-end manufacturing for high-growth industries like Energy, EV, semiconductors and precision engineering. These clusters should encourage co-location of suppliers, logistics providers and manufacturers.

Workforce development: India must revamp its ITIs, modernising curriculum to align with current and future industry demands. Structured apprenticeship programs, PPP should be encouraged to establish a CoE focused on critical skill development areas like robotics, CNC operations and smart manufacturing technologies.

Accelerated adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies: This can be achieved by offering targeted subsidies and tax incentives to encourage MSMEs to invest in automation, data analytics and digital tools. India also needs to strengthen its R&D ecosystem. Currently, India spends a mere 0.7% of its GDP in R&D, while China spends 2.4%. With the help of ongoing government policy push, PPP, and adoption of smart manufacturing, this investment should grow for India to truly claim its global position of a top-tier manufacturing hub for the World.

To read the full whitepaper, click here