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The BRICS Summit began in New Delhi on Saturday with supply-chain resilience high on its economic agenda, as India seeks deeper trade and manufacturing links among a grouping that stretches across Asia, Africa, Latin America and West Asia.
The business opportunity is sizeable. Intra-BRICS merchandise trade has risen nearly 13-fold, from $84 billion in 2003 to $1.17 trillion in 2024, according to the Commerce Ministry.
At the BRICS Business Forum ahead of the summit, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said the grouping now accounts for nearly a fourth of global trade and called for trade among members to be backed by diversified supply chains.
That raises a question for India: as businesses and economies seek additional sources of goods beyond China,
can India become a significant manufacturing and sourcing option for the Global South?
China Plus One
China+1 refers to companies retaining operations or suppliers in China while adding manufacturing or sourcing capacity in another country.
The strategy gathered pace after three developments exposed the risks of concentrating production in one geography: US-China tariffs beginning in 2018 raised the cost of Chinese exports to the American market; Covid-19 lockdowns disrupted factories and shipping; and subsequent geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions made supply-chain security a bigger consideration for businesses.
The result was not a wholesale exit from China. Production began spreading across additional locations.
Mexico benefited from manufacturers seeking proximity to the US, while Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian economies attracted electronics and industrial production. India emerged as another option, helped by its domestic market, labour pool and manufacturing incentives.
India’s strongest evidence is smartphones, where the government’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme has helped attract manufacturers and build export-oriented production.
Smartphone production increased from about $30 billion in FY2020 to $71 billion in FY2026, while exports rose nearly tenfold from roughly $3 billion to $29.4 billion over the same period.
The PLI scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing, launched in 2020, offered incentives linked to incremental production and sales and ran until March 2026. The government says mobile-phone production increased about 2.4 times over the life of the scheme, while India turned from a net importer into a major exporter of mobile phones.
Apple has been one of the biggest drivers of that export surge, with suppliers including Foxconn and Tata Electronics expanding production in India as the company diversifies part of its manufacturing beyond China.
But industry executives say attracting the assembly line is only the beginning. “If India wants to genuinely be China plus one, it has to demonstrate end-to-end cost advantage,” Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi told Fortune India in May.
“You can’t just be bringing components in and assembling them in India,” she said.
Can India Be A ‘Plus One’ For The Global South?
There are signs that India’s exports are increasingly finding markets beyond the US and Europe.
A September 2026 analysis by McKinsey Global Institute found that India’s export mix shifted towards developing markets during the first five months of 2026. ASEAN’s share of Indian exports increased by 3.1 percentage points year-on-year, while Africa’s share rose by two percentage points.
Part of that shift came from the disruption to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz. McKinsey found that buyers in ASEAN and Africa turned to Indian refined petroleum as Gulf supplies were constrained. But the expansion was not confined to energy: exports of smartphones and other communications equipment continued to grow, while transport equipment also recorded gains.
Within BRICS, India already has sizeable markets in economies such as Brazil and South Africa. Indian exports to Brazil reached $8.35 billion in calendar year 2025, according to data published by India’s Consulate General in São Paulo. Pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, petroleum products and automobile components are among India’s major exports to Brazil.
India exported about $7 billion worth of goods to South Africa in FY2025-26, with vehicles and components, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, chemicals, textiles and other manufactured products among the main shipments.
Industry sees considerable room to expand that footprint. An ASSOCHAM report estimated that India’s exports to BRICS countries could rise from about $96 billion in FY2025-26 to $200 billion by 2030 as trade links among developing economies deepen.
That matters to the China+1 argument because India does not have to displace China across these markets to benefit. It can emerge as an additional supplier in sectors where it already has manufacturing and export capabilities.
Piyush Goyal made a similar case at the BRICS Business Forum on Friday. He argued for deeper trade among member countries, saying India could expand exports of engineering goods, electronics and pharmaceuticals while BRICS partners could provide greater access to raw materials and critical minerals. He said such trade should be supported by more diversified and resilient supply chains.
India Still Needs China To Make Many Of Those Goods
India imported nearly $132 billion worth of goods from China in FY2025-26, according to Reuters. These included inputs and machinery critical to the functioning of Indian factories, underlining how deeply China remains embedded in India’s manufacturing supply chains.
Electronics illustrates the dependence. Even as India exports more smartphones, imports of electronics goods, including chips, surged more than 44 per cent year-on-year to $14.37 billion in July 2026, according to Reuters.
The government is now trying to move production further down the supply chain. In January, India approved electronic-component manufacturing projects worth Rs 418.63 billion, or about $4.64 billion, involving companies including Samsung Electronics, Tata Electronics and Foxconn. The projects cover components such as mobile-phone enclosures and camera sub-assemblies and are part of a broader effort to reduce import dependence.
But reducing that dependence will take time. A study by Bank of Baroda economist Dipanwita Mazumdar found that import dependence among India’s largest listed companies had remained broadly unchanged since FY2019, averaging about 22.2 per cent. The study found continued dependence across sectors including chemicals, shipbuilding, paper and electronics.
Can BRICS Change That Equation?
This is where India’s BRICS chairship becomes commercially relevant.
At the BRICS Trade Ministers’ meeting in August, members adopted a Global Value Chains Action Plan for 2026-30. It includes a proposed BRICS Technical Council, a joint study on global value chains and the possibility of establishing a strategic supply-chain and investment-promotion platform, including for pharmaceuticals and food security.
BRICS has also worked on logistics cooperation and mechanisms intended to bring smaller businesses into global value chains.
The expanded grouping gives India access to economies occupying different parts of the production chain: commodity and resource producers, manufacturing economies, large consumer markets and logistics and financial hubs.
The Industry Perspective
Raymond Chairman Gautam Singhania said in July that China+1 was “no longer just a trend”, calling it an “operational imperative” for multinational companies seeking supply-chain resilience.
But the competition for that investment is intense. Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Mexico are all seeking the same manufacturing shift, while several have mature supplier clusters and greater integration with regional trade agreements.
India’s advantages are different: a large domestic market alongside an export base, a growing electronics industry, established pharmaceutical and automotive sectors and improving logistics infrastructure.
The government itself does not want those advantages reduced to a China+1 story.
“They want to diversify their supply chains but for that India is not the only place, they can go anywhere,” Piyush Goyal told The Indian Express in August.
“We have to make India an attractive case on its own merit and not just because it’s China plus one,” he said.
The ‘Plus One’ Opportunity Is Real, But Still Taking Shape
India can become a major China+1 manufacturing base for the Global South, and the shift is already visible in sectors such as smartphones, pharmaceuticals and automobiles. But its continued dependence on Chinese components and machinery means it has not yet built the depth of supply chains needed to play that role across industries.
For now, India is a credible emerging alternative — not yet a full-fledged one.
