“This Is Why India Should Make For India”: Capitalmind CEO Deepak Shenoy

Capitalmind CEO Deepak Shenoy said that India should focus on self-reliance, warning that relying too much on imports limits the country’s ability to improve its own production capabilities.

The CEO bats for 'Make for India'

In a recent post on the social media platform X, he wrote, “This is why India should make for India. Because the more imports you rely on, the less you get in knowledge of how those things are made. And then, you don't get the equivalent of a hallway conversation on how to make it better, even if it's for you.”

This is why India should make for India. Because the more imports you rely on, the less you get in knowledge of how those things are made. And then, you don't get the equivalent of a hallway conversation on how to make it better, even if it's for you. https://t.co/z3yMtzNHu5

— Deepak Shenoy (@deepakshenoy) March 19, 2025

Shenoy made this remark after US Vice President JD Vance criticised the West’s past assumptions about manufacturing and innovation.

“There were two conceits that our leadership class had when it came to globalisation,” Vance said.

He added that the idea that rich countries could focus only on design while outsourcing manufacturing had backfired.

"It turns out that the geographies that do the manufacturing get awfully good at the designing of things,” he said.

Vance remarked that countries handling manufacturing not only got better at making products but also started improving at designing them. 

“The firms that design products work with firms that manufacture. They share intellectual property, they share best practices, and they even sometimes share critical employees,” Vance pointed out.

"We assume that other nations would always trail us in the value chain but it turns out that as they got better at the low end of the value chain they also started catching up on the higher end. we were squeezed from both ends, " he said. 

According to Vance, the second major flaw was the overreliance on cheap labour, which he likened to an addiction that discouraged true innovation.

“Cheap labor became the drug of Western economies...Companies innovating in the absence of cheap labor is a good thing,” he said, suggesting that when businesses are forced to pay higher wages, they focus more on automation and efficiency.

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