‘Even if 10% of China’s incremental growth shifts to India…’: Nation’s manufacturing needs to take off now, say leaders at WEF 2026

WEF Davos 2026: Even if 10 per cent of the incremental growth in China shifts to India, the country’s manufacturing will double in five years, said Deepak Jain, CEO & MD, Jubilant Ingrevia. Gopal Agarwal, CEO, Anupam Rasayan said it is important to see if India is investing enough in its manufacturing, while Sanjeev Krishnan, Chairperson of PwC India said it is important to understand how much of Indian manufacturing is automated. 

Speaking at a session during the launch of the PwC India CEO Survey in World Economic Forum 2026 at Davos, Jain told Business Today, “We know China manufacturing is almost 10X of India manufacturing…they have $1.2 trillion of trade surplus, despite whatever has happened in the last few years. Their exports are still growing despite everything else in the last couple of years. Whatever incremental growth was supposed to go to China, even if 10 per cent of that shifted to India – only 10 per cent of the incremental growth, because nobody is going to shut down plants and move to India  – our manufacturing will double in five years. If that 10 per cent becomes 20 per cent, we will triple our size of manufacturing.”

Jain said that there is a “big and fundamental belief that manufacturing in this country has to take off now”. 

“On a lighter note, we have a ton of online guys…what will they sell? Even if they have to sell air, they will have to package it and sell it…so you will still require manufacturing,” said Agarwal. 

“The way China has grown in the last 25 years…just a 5-10 per cent of the incremental growth will be more than sufficient for us to be in the business and grow 2-3 times in the next five years. The challenge is have we really invested enough? The thing we need to look at is, are we doing manufacturing at some scale?” he said. 

“It is very important to see how much of our industries are we automating at this point,” said Krishnan. 

Krishnan said that three segments – IT, industrial manufacturing, and aerospace and defence – are the three sectors where businesses are diversifying and value pools are shifting. “Some of these are capital intensive and we are seeing some green shoots or private investments to supplement the public investments that we have been seeing for many years,” he said. 

“The India opportunity is alive and kicking, but some areas need more work than others,” said Krishnan.

Watch the full conversation here: