Acute global competition and the developed supply chains, what decides the winner is the consistency in quality. The end user whether in exports or domestic market closely scrutinises any reliable quality systems’ prerequisite mandate. Standards around safety, reliability, and traceability are already set and consistently enforced across markets. For India, the ambition to become a global manufacturing hub depends on meeting and practicing these expectations through a system that is both credible and reliable. Over the past decade, India has increased the number of products under mandatory certification from 106 in 2014 to more than 720 by April 2026, under the framework guided by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). It has gone through the rigor to study the standards across the globe and set BIS on par, ensuring its testing and certification in domestic market and imports to protect India against low quality dumping.
This step strengthens consumer protection and market trust. It also removes the misconception that adhering to quality is at extra compliance costs for businesses. India has both the large scale and small manufacturers, and it has established the discipline of similar quality norms enabling the MSMEs to compete in market. It follows a dual strategy of expanding quality coverage while making compliance much simpler, ensuring a clear move from a purely regulatory system to one that actively supports ease of doing business.
Across manufacturing settings in varied products and different sectors the value of BIS certifications has been established by setting standards and handholding to produce the same.
Standards often are misconstrued to mean that it is for big manufacturers at the cost of small players forgetting the major objective is to ensure that the products are safe for users and reliable for longevity, health, safety and consistency. They also help Indian goods gain acceptance in markets around the world. The framing of standards and then handholding the same ensures that any standards system veracity and acceptability lies in how easily companies can meet the rules. If compliance stays complex, costly, or slow, it hits MSMEs hardest. It raises their transaction costs and slows production cycles. India has seen this risk and acted with purpose. The reforms make compliance simpler, faster, and more predictable without lowering the strength of the standards. This balance is the heart of the new system.
Recognising this, recent reforms under BIS has focused on making compliance simpler, faster, and more predictable, without diluting the integrity of the standards. This has been pointed out in the case of JRD Spintech, where the company’s alignment with Indian Standards has led to stronger process discipline and greater consistency in output. Continued engagement through BIS-led workshops and industry interactions has also been acknowledged as useful in keeping pace with changing requirements.
{{/usCountry}}Recognising this, recent reforms under BIS has focused on making compliance simpler, faster, and more predictable, without diluting the integrity of the standards. This has been pointed out in the case of JRD Spintech, where the company’s alignment with Indian Standards has led to stronger process discipline and greater consistency in output. Continued engagement through BIS-led workshops and industry interactions has also been acknowledged as useful in keeping pace with changing requirements.
{{/usCountry}}India’s standards framework has reached nearly 94% alignment with global benchmarks in several sectors wherever international standards exist. At the same time, certification covers more than 1,400 product categories. The addition of over 100 new products in the last financial year shows steady progress. These steps come with built-in flexibility that reduces problems for industry. The growth in quality standards does not hurt business efficiency. It, in fact, enables better standards and discipline in the production processes.
Five targeted reforms drive this progress and prove that quality rules can support industrial growth instead of holding it back.
- Certification validity has been extended to five years. Earlier, companies faced frequent renewals and repeated paperwork. The new rule cuts that load. Businesses pay the fee year by year instead of all at once. This gives real administrative relief and protects cash flow.
- Entry barriers have been lowered. The old rule that required every manufacturer to maintain its own in-house laboratory has been removed. Companies can now use shared testing facilities, cluster-based infrastructure, or accredited third-party laboratories. This change removes heavy capital costs. Smaller firms can now get certified without large upfront spending.
- The surveillance system has shifted to a risk-based model with more focus on market monitoring. Factory inspections have dropped from once a year to once in five years for companies with good compliance records. Regulators now rely on compliance history and risk profiling. This reduces stops in daily work while keeping proper oversight.
- The cost of compliance has been cut for smaller enterprises. Financial concessions run until May 2029. Micro enterprises and startups get 80% fee reductions. Small enterprises get 50%. Medium enterprises get 20%. Women-led units and units in the Northeast get an extra 10%. These steps directly ease the cost pressure on the companies that need it most.
- Approvals have become fast and predictable. In FY 2025–26, over 10,000 certifications were granted. More than 95% of simplified procedure applications were processed within 30 days. In electronics and IT alone, nearly 5,000 certifications were issued, with 88% cleared in 20 working days. Companies can now plan production and market entry with certainty.
The efforts to emerge as a quality conscious manufacturing nation, care and emphasise on preventing health hazards in material used and uniformity with transparency puts India as a reliable manufacturing nation. Few real testimonials to illustrate how the transformation to quality standard manufacturing is facilitated adding advantage to competition and better realisations. India now offers a predictable regulatory environment, a cost-efficient yet quality-focused production base, and a reliable place in global value chains. The country ensures domestic compliance and becomes more attractive to global buyers by placing ease of doing business at the centre of quality rules. This is a strategic move that turns quality into a competitive strength and India to emerge as a standard compliant manufacturing hub.
The expanding standards regime could have added a real burden on industry but the approach to implement through above listed five carefully designed reforms, the system has been transformed into an enabling framework. Quality regulation has moved from control to support by cutting compliance frequency, lowering costs, adding flexibility, and speeding up approvals.
This link between strong quality assurance and ease of doing business will decide India’s success in the coming years. It ensures that growth will be rapid, resilient, and able to compete globally. High standards protect consumers and open export doors. Simple compliance frees companies to invest in machines, jobs, and new ideas. They build a manufacturing base that the world can trust. The numbers already show the impact in both domestic and export markets. India has chosen the right path where quality and business growth move together to emerge as a strong manufacturing hub that is inclusive of both the big and small manufacturers competing with same standards.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Aruna Sharma, practitioner development economist and former secretary, Government of India.