India's electrical wire and cable industry delivered one of its strongest performances in recent memory during 2025, with the sector expanding at an estimated 12% year-on-year in value terms. This growth outpaced the broader electrical equipment market and cemented cables as one of the key beneficiaries of India's ongoing infrastructure boom.
The Indian wire and cable market — valued at approximately ₹70,000 crore — serves a vast and diverse demand base spanning residential housing, commercial construction, industrial facilities, power transmission, railways, and telecommunications. The 2025 surge was not driven by a single factor but by a convergence of government-led infrastructure spending, private sector capex revival, and new-age demand from data centres and 5G networks.
For domestic manufacturers holding Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) licences and IS certification marks, the growth wave presented a significant opportunity. At the same time, it intensified competition and raised the stakes for quality compliance and capacity expansion.
The single largest driver of cable demand in 2025 was India's accelerated infrastructure investment. The National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP), a government programme targeting ₹111 lakh crore in infrastructure spending through 2025, continued to deliver large-scale projects across roads, rail, ports, airports, and urban development — every one of which requires extensive cabling.
Metro rail projects were a particularly visible source of demand. Cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Ahmedabad either expanded existing networks or broke ground on new corridors. Metro systems require specialised power cables, signalling cables, low-voltage control cables, and fire-resistant wiring — all manufactured to exacting IS and international standards.
Smart Cities Mission projects — covering smart street lighting, SCADA-controlled utilities, underground cabling for urban aesthetics, and IoT-based infrastructure — added another layer of high-specification cable demand. Underground cabling work alone in India's Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities contributed meaningfully to the armoured cable and medium-voltage cable segments.
Metro rail expansion in 10+ cities driving power and control cable demand
National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) road projects requiring lighting and signalling cables
Smart Cities Mission — 100 cities investing in underground cabling and smart grid infrastructure
New airport developments and terminal expansions requiring low-smoke, fire-retardant wiring
Port modernisation projects demanding marine and armoured cables
The Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme launched by the Government of India has had a cascading effect on the wire and cable sector. While cables are not directly covered under a dedicated PLI scheme, the scheme's impact on allied sectors — including consumer electronics, white goods, solar photovoltaic modules, telecom equipment, and advanced chemistry cells — has created strong secondary demand for wires and cables used within manufacturing plants and assembly facilities.
New PLI-backed manufacturing facilities for mobile phones, semiconductors, solar panels, and EV batteries all require industrial wiring, power distribution cables, and control cables during construction as well as ongoing plant operations. India added several large greenfield and brownfield manufacturing campuses in 2024–25 under PLI approvals, each representing a substantial cable procurement project.
Additionally, the push toward domestic electronics manufacturing under PLI has revived demand for specialised instrumentation cables and data cables, segments that were previously dominated by imports. Indian cable manufacturers with the technical capability to produce these grades found themselves well-positioned to capture new business.
Housing remains the largest single end-use segment for house-wiring cables — the PVC-insulated flexible conductors manufactured to IS 694 that run through every home in India. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme, targeting housing for all by 2024 and subsequently extended, has driven significant construction activity across both rural and urban India. Each completed unit requires wiring for lighting points, fan points, plug points, and dedicated circuits for appliances.
At the premium end of the market, large-scale residential townships, gated communities, and luxury apartment complexes in metro cities continued to drive demand for FRLS (fire retardant low smoke) and ZHFR (zero halogen fire retardant) wires — higher-value products that carry better margins for manufacturers.
India's urbanisation rate continues to rise steadily, with an estimated 600 million people expected to live in urban areas by 2036. This structural shift toward urban living sustains a long-duration demand tailwind for all categories of building wires and internal wiring cables.
PMAY (Urban and Rural) — millions of housing units driving base-level wiring demand
Affordable housing projects in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities accelerating
Premium residential segment favouring FRLS and ZHFR wires
Structural urbanisation trend sustaining multi-year demand growth
Two emerging demand segments — data centres and 5G telecom infrastructure — contributed meaningfully to cable market growth in 2025 and are expected to become even more significant through 2026 and beyond.
India's data centre capacity has been expanding rapidly, driven by cloud computing adoption, digital financial services, government e-governance platforms, and streaming media consumption. A data centre is an extremely cable-intensive facility: power distribution cables, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) cables, structured cabling for networking, and fire-resistant wiring for safety systems are all required in large quantities. India added several hundred megawatts of new data centre capacity in 2024–25 alone, with Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, and Delhi-NCR being the primary hubs.
The 5G rollout by major telecom operators — Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and BSNL — required extensive ground-level cabling infrastructure. While 5G itself is a wireless technology, the backhaul networks connecting base stations require fibre optic cables and coaxial cables. The ground-level power supply to tens of thousands of new base transceiver stations (BTS) also created demand for low-voltage power cables.
Data centre power distribution cables — 11kV and LT grade cables for hyperscale facilities
Structured cabling for server room networks
5G base station power and backhaul cabling across 200,000+ tower sites
Fibre optic cable demand surge for last-mile broadband and telecom backhaul
India's cable exports have grown steadily over the past three years as Indian manufacturers have improved quality standards, built production capacity, and developed relationships with overseas buyers. In 2025, exports of wires and cables from India are estimated to have crossed ₹8,000 crore, with growth driven primarily by shipments to the Middle East, Africa, and neighbouring South Asian nations.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries — particularly the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — represent a major market for Indian-manufactured cables. Large-scale infrastructure projects in the region, combined with India's competitive manufacturing cost structure, have enabled Indian exporters to win significant contracts for power cables, building wires, and armoured cables.
African markets — particularly East Africa and West Africa — have seen Indian cable exports grow as infrastructure investment in those regions accelerates. Countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, and Tanzania are significant buyers of Indian wires for power distribution and building construction. BIS-certified products manufactured to IS standards carry credibility in these markets as evidence of quality compliance.
Despite the strong headline growth, India's cable industry faces structural challenges that manufacturers and buyers alike must be aware of.
Raw material cost volatility — particularly for copper and aluminium — remains the most significant challenge. Copper prices on the London Metal Exchange (LME) have experienced sharp swings, making cost forecasting and contract pricing difficult for manufacturers. When raw material costs rise faster than manufacturers can pass them on to buyers, margin pressure intensifies. When prices fall suddenly, inventory written at higher cost creates losses.
Quality standards enforcement is improving but remains uneven. Despite BIS mandatory certification requirements for cables sold under IS 694, IS 1554, and other key standards, substandard and uncertified products continue to circulate in certain regional markets, particularly in smaller towns. The BIS and state electrical inspectorates have stepped up enforcement raids and licence suspension actions, but counterfeit ISI marks and unbranded cables remain a concern for genuine manufacturers.
Copper and aluminium price volatility squeezing manufacturer margins
Substandard and counterfeit cables undercutting compliant manufacturers on price
Skilled workforce shortages in specialty cable manufacturing segments
Long payment cycles from government and infrastructure project clients
Growing import competition from China in specific cable categories
Industry analysts and trade associations project that the Indian wire and cable market will sustain high single-digit to low double-digit growth through 2026 and into the following years. The government has maintained its infrastructure spending commitments in union budgets, and private sector capex activity continues to recover. The structural tailwinds — urbanisation, electrification of rural areas, renewable energy expansion, and digital infrastructure buildout — are multi-year forces that do not diminish quickly.
The renewable energy segment, in particular, is expected to become an increasingly important demand driver. India's target of 500 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 requires massive amounts of cables for solar parks, wind farms, transmission lines, and grid interconnections. Solar DC cables, XLPE high-voltage cables, and overhead conductors will all see sustained demand growth.
For buyers — whether they are electrical contractors, builders, project managers, or procurement teams — the growth environment makes it even more important to partner with manufacturers who hold genuine BIS certification, operate with transparent pricing, and maintain consistent product quality. Elmeck Wires & Cables, as an ISI-certified manufacturer with over 30 years of experience and a distribution network spanning 200+ cities across India, is well positioned to be that trusted partner as the industry enters its next phase of growth.
