Pictured from left to right: Jason McCartney, Mandy Ridyard, Professor Parikshit Goswami, and David Antich
Mandy Ridyard, Director of Marketing and Communications at ASG Aerospace and a National Manufacturing Commissioner, returned from October's trade mission to India convinced that aerospace, drones and semiconductors offer some of the most exciting opportunities in the UK–India relationship. All three markets are growing quickly. All three are strategic priorities for the Indian government. And in each, India is building impressive domestic capability.
The Free Trade Agreement, in force since 15 July, cuts India's 11% duty on UK aerospace goods to zero but the bigger story is what India is building.
Aerospace: demand at scale and a growing supply base
India's aerospace market is set to roughly double, from over $30bn in 2025 to $61bn by 2035, according to the Civil Aviation Minister. The commercial fleet is expected to more than double to around 2,050 aircraft. Indian carriers have some 1,500 aircraft on order.
Global manufacturers are investing alongside that growth:
GE Aerospace announced during the mission that it will roughly double Indian sourcing, to about $400m a year by 2030.
Rolls-Royce plans to double its Indian sourcing over five years.
Safran has opened a €200m LEAP engine MRO facility in Hyderabad.
Embraer has signed with Adani to explore a regional jet final assembly line in India.
Indian MSMEs already export more than Rs18,000 crore (around £1.6bn) of aircraft components a year. India's precision manufacturing base is maturing quickly and is increasingly part of the same global supply chains as UK firms.
For UK aerostructures and machining SMEs, Ridyard sees the strongest opportunities in complementary specialist capability, in MRO and aftermarket support for a fleet that is set to double, and in partnerships with Indian firms that play to both sides' strengths.
Semiconductors may be the largest opening for UK precision engineering. India has long been strong in chip design and is now building a manufacturing base at remarkable pace, creating demand for equipment, components and skills.
Micron's $2.75bn assembly and test plant in Sanand, Gujarat, was inaugurated in February 2026, with more than 500,000 sq ft of cleanroom.
CG Semi and Kaynes have opened further packaging and test plants in the same cluster.
Tata and Taiwan's PSMC are building India's first front-end fab at Dholera, a roughly $11bn, 28nm project. Civil works were about half complete in March, and Tata signed a partnership with ASML in May. Full readiness is expected around 2028.
The scale of the ambition brings significant demand. Industry estimates suggest the sector will need around 300,000 trained professionals over the next five to seven years, alongside specialist materials and precision equipment.
UK suppliers are well placed to help. Fabs and assembly plants run on ultra-precision vacuum, wafer-handling and process-chamber components, and on fast, reliable spares. Firms already qualified with the equipment makers can follow those customers into India. Skills and training collaboration is just as valuable.
India has made drones a self-reliance priority. Liberalised Drone Rules in 2021, the Drone Shakti programme and a production-linked incentive worth 20% of domestic value added have helped a strong domestic industry take shape, with international partners contributing at component and systems level.
Alongside civil uses in agriculture, logistics and inspection, India's military drone market is estimated at around $810m in 2026 and forecast to reach about $2.2bn by 2031. Domestic firms such as ideaForge, Paras Defence, BEL and L&T are scaling across platforms, defence electronics and systems.
For UK firms, the best fit is in supporting India's drone makers with complementary technology:
precision airframe, propulsion and gimbal components
sensors, electro-optical and infrared payloads
RF, datalinks and navigation
testing, certification and airworthiness know-how
Partnering with Indian manufacturers, so UK expertise supports their growth and domestic value-added goals, is the natural route.
Across all three sectors, Ridyard saw the same themes emerge. The greatest value lies in specialist capability, where precision, materials, certification and process know-how matter most. Global manufacturers investing in India are creating space for their established partners to grow alongside them. Joint ventures, licensing and shared programmes allow UK and Indian firms to build on each other's strengths and support India's Make in India ambitions.Long-term support matters too. A fleet heading for more than 2,000 aircraft and a new generation of fabs will both need MRO, tooling and spares for decades. And skills run through everything: apprenticeship and technical training models attracted strong interest, and reflect the people-to-people links that help industrial partnerships last.
