New Delhi: Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu said on Thursday that India’s aerospace market is poised to nearly double from over $30 billion in 2025 to $61 billion by 2035, even as the country’s commercial aviation fleet is expected to more than double to around 2,050 aircraft, creating a massive opportunity for Indian manufacturers and MSMEs to become part of global aerospace supply chains.
“We want to create Indian aerospace manufacturing where an electronics manufacturer can see an opportunity in avionics, where a precision engineering company can move into aerospace components, where an MSME supplying automobile manufacturers can confidently say, looking at the aerospace components, that I can do this, too,” he said in his address at the CII and Ministry of Civil Aviation Vortex 2026, a national initiative to integrate Indian MSMEs into high-value global aerospace supply chains.
The success of India’s auto-component industry (now a $70 billion sector) and mobile-phone manufacturing, with 99 per cent of phones used in India being made in India, are proven models that can be replicated in aerospace, he added.
“MSME exports have grown 3 times from about Rs 4 lakh crore in 2021 to Rs 12.4 lakh crore in 2025 with more than 1.73 lakh MSMEs now exporting directly to the world, so I believe you already have 80 per cent of what aerospace demands are, the remaining 20 per cent is where the regulation comes in and this is where we are to help you,” the minister said.
Indian carriers have an order book of 1,640 aircraft, which would translate into an estimated 80 crore parts and components that we need to manufacture, he said.
“With passenger traffic in India expected to grow at 8.9 per cent year on year through 2035, which is the fastest for any major economy in the world, no other manufacturing sector offers this kind of unique combination: a booming domestic market and global OEMs looking at India to diversify supply from India,” he added.
“Globally, Airbus and Boeing together have orders for over 15,000 commercial aircraft, and this is not just about what is coming to India. This is another big opportunity for our Indian MSME sector,” the minister said.
Secretary, Civil Aviation, Samir Kumar Sinha said: “India is already the world’s third-largest domestic aviation market, with operational airports rising from 74 in 2014 to 166 today and the fleet growing from around 350 aircraft in 2014 to approximately 874, and in the next 20 years more than 2,000 aircraft are expected to join the Indian fleet.”
The Modified UDAN scheme, with a budgetary outlay of nearly Rs 29,000 crore, will further expand the ecosystem through 100 additional airports and 200 modern helipads,” he added.
Airports Authority of India Chairman Vipin Kumar said: “Indian MSMEs and start-ups already supply more than Rs 18,000 crore worth of aircraft components annually to the global market.” The passenger traffic growth will generate demand across aircraft, components, MROs, ground equipment, navigation systems, airport technologies, training facilities and digital solutions, he added.
The AAI will support the initiative by continuing expansion of aviation infrastructure and connectivity, creating opportunities for Indian technology within the airport ecosystem, offering airports as platforms for innovation and demonstration.
“Boeing has 300 Indian supplier partners, of which 25 per cent are MSMEs…. The question before us is not whether India can make aerospace products. That is already happening. The question is how quickly we can scale,” CII National Committee on Aerospace Manufacturing Chairman and Boeing India and South Asia President Salil Gupte said.
(IANS)
