Getting your electronics product manufactured in India

There are 4 main stages of electronics product manufacturing, once you have completed the design with PCB gerber files, Bill of materials (BOM), and Firmware (if a processor is present):

1) Component sourcing

There are a lot of electronics components distributors  in India who stock the parts locally. If you are going to get a bigger order done in India, its smarter to get the parts locally as you will save lot of import duties. But if you are importing electronics parts to India and exporting back the manufactured products then you can save on the import duties, as government provides some concession. You need to have a import export code for this. 

Also look at this link for sources : 

• Where to buy electronics components online in India?
• How to order components from Digikey to India without Shipping charges

2) PCB fabrication

I have listed down the contact details of PCB fabricating companies in India at this link :

• Low cost PCB manufacturers in India

3) PCB assembling

When you have the components and the bare PCB ready, you can get the boards assembled from assembling companies like,

Shritech, Bangalore or Smile Electronics, Bangalore

4) Firmware upload and testing

If your board has a microcontroller or a processor which needs some programming or configuration to be done, you will need help of a design house or a developer who can do this task for you along with testing the product for functionality and certifying it. You can contact me for this task 🙂

How i got involved into all this ?

Recently one person from Australia found me through my blog and wrote me a mail as he wanted to get his boards manufactured in India. Earlier he was getting the boards done from China but he was not happy with them so he wanted to switch to India. He told he has worked with some Indian developers before and found them honest. 

He wanted to know if there are any good low cost electronics manufacturing services provider in India. He has all the things ready as it was a open source tested design. I found some EMS companies and wrote to them about the requirement, but none of them responded properly. So i suggested him that i know what needs to be done and you can get everything done discretely from different service providers and i will channel the whole process through my office. He told he is willing to try this approach and he would pay me for my time at my hourly rate.

Then i contacted different vendors and got quotes for the PCB fabrication, Components, Assembling services and forwarded to him. 

We shortlisted,

• PCB Power for PCB fabrication 
• Mouser electronics for components 
• Shritech for Assembling services

Payment was done online to PCB power from the client directly and boards arrived in no time, Thanks to PCB power for fast service.

Then we found Mouser electronics is the best option to get the parts, so he ordered the parts online to Australia. Then he packed everything into one big parcel and shipped them directly to the assembling company in Bangalore. We incurred some import duties because i didn’t have the Import Export License at that time. Customs evaluated the parcel to be worth Rs. 2 lakhs and levied import duty of Rs.38,000/- which was paid by the client. 

The assembling company Shritech got the Stencil done for manufacturing which helps in speeding up the manufacturing process and got the boards assembled and sent to me for firmware uploading and testing.

I took each board and loaded the firmware, tested them and fixed some boards which had minor soldering issues. When everything was alright i shipped them back to Australia through DHL.  Now all of the boards are sold out and he is soon planning to get a new order done. 

Update: I am working on the same model now with a client from U.S.A and doing some firmware programming also for them. This time we are getting the 3D printing of the enclosure done and later will go to plastic moulding for bulk manufacture. Feeling Excited to Make in India 🙂