India overtook the United States to become the world’s second-largest market for solar installations in 2025. The country built out close to 50 GW of solar in a year, a feat it is expected to match or even exceed in 2026. And that trend is set to continue, with analysts at Wood Mackenzie forecasting another 526 GW of solar to be added between 2026 and 2035, with projects 5 MW and larger accounting for the largest share. “Inverter demand in the large-scale segment will remain substantial and durable,” said Harshul Kanwar, research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

The Indian government has supported massive investment in capacity to meet this demand with locally made modules. For the inverters they connect to though, it’s a different story.

“Very little of India’s inverter demand is met by genuinely domestic products,” said Kanwar.

Kanwar noted that while India hosts around 45 GW of inverter manufacturing capacity, this largely only encompasses the final stages of assembly, and is dominated by overseas companies that import the core components from their own manufacturing bases to assemble them into products with only a few locally sourced generic inputs.

Inverter imports to India are subject to the 20% basic customs duty, but the domestic content framework and production-linked incentive scheme that have been key to spurring investments in module manufacturing are not available to the inverter sector. “The policy toolkit for inverters is therefore significantly narrower and provides a softer push toward domestic production than has been applied to modules,” Kanwar explained.

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