India exported wind turbines and components worth more than Rs 12,000 crore in FY2025-26, a jump of nearly 50% from Rs 8,200 crore in the previous financial year, according to a report released by the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association (IWTMA).

For an industry that has spent most of its history building for the domestic market, the jump is hard to ignore, and it forms the centrepiece of a new report from the Indian Wind Turbine Manufacturers Association (IWTMA), "Elevating India's Wind Turbine Exports for Global Markets."

The numbers tell their own story. India's factories can now turn out close to 24 GW of wind equipment a year, but the home market only needs about 10 GW of it. The rest — somewhere between 4 and 6 GW annually — is already finding buyers abroad. And this isn't happening at the expense of the domestic business either: India installed a record 6.1 GW of wind capacity of its own in FY25-26.

IWTMA's reading of this is straightforward. With the global wind market expected to grow to around 212 GW of new capacity a year by 2030, India has a narrow window to stop treating exports as a nice-to-have and start building them into the industry's core strategy. The report spends most of its pages on what that would actually take.

Start with financing, because that's where the report is bluntest. India simply doesn't have an export incentive for wind turbines — not the kind Denmark, Germany, China or the US already offer their own manufacturers. That absence shows up everywhere: in higher costs at the factory gate, in the trouble Indian firms have getting long-term export loans, and in the lack of any safety net for overseas buyers. In markets where price is everything, cheap finance often decides who wins the contract, and right now that's not India.

IWTMA wants three things done about it. One, an incentive — call it the Export-Linked Wind Manufacturing Incentive — paid out either per megawatt or against turnover, running for five to seven years. Two, a dedicated export finance facility, housed at EXIM Bank or IREDA, that can offer buyer's credit stretching out 15 to 20 years and lend in local currencies in the markets that need it. Three, a government-backed guarantee that lets Indian companies offer deferred payment terms without taking on the risk themselves. The report also wants the old Interest Equalisation Scheme brought back for wind, and wind exports formally reclassified as "project exports" so they can access better insurance cover.

**Not as local as it looks**

Here's a number that might surprise people: Indian wind turbines look 70 per cent localised at the assembly stage, but that figure drops to roughly 50 per cent once you look at the whole system. Converters, generators, specialty castings — the expensive parts — are still mostly imported. That gap adds cost and, as the report puts it, leaves the whole supply chain more fragile than it needs to be.

The fix, according to IWTMA, is a staged local-content push under the government's existing ALMM rules, paired with incentives similar to the PLI scheme but built specifically for wind parts. On the practical side: rework import duties on specialty steel, set up supplier clusters near ports, get large manufacturers co-developing parts with smaller vendors, and make credit easier for those Tier-2 suppliers to access. There's also a pointed line about rare-earth magnets — India needs to diversify where it sources them from, and start looking seriously at magnet-light drivetrain designs, given how much of that supply chain currently runs through China.

**No certification, no credibility**

This one is more technical but arguably just as important. India doesn't have a certification body recognised under the international IECRE system, and that's a real problem for exporters — without it, lenders overseas charge more to finance projects using Indian turbines, and some tenders simply aren't open to bidders without that stamp of approval.

The good news, the report says, is that the groundwork already exists. The National Institute of Wind Energy is already accredited by NABCB and NABL, which gives it a running start toward full IECRE membership. IWTMA wants NIWE to set up a dedicated certification arm, pursue that membership actively, and have the government help pay for manufacturers to get certified against IEC, UL and DNV standards. It's also floating a separate, faster certification track specifically for turbines being built for export, so exporters aren't stuck waiting behind the domestic approval queue.

Most Indian manufacturers are turning out 2-3 MW machines. The rest of the world has moved on to 5 MW-plus turbines packed with sensors and predictive-maintenance software. IWTMA is blunt about what that means: if the gap isn't closed, India risks getting stuck selling into the cheaper, lower-margin end of the market while everyone else moves upmarket.

Its answer is a government-backed Wind R&D Mission aimed at developing 4-6 MW platforms, ideally with global technology partners, focused on longer blades, better control systems, digital twins and more automated manufacturing. Push localisation from today's 70 per cent up to 80-85 per cent through work on blade materials and gearbox testing, the report estimates, and component costs could fall by as much as a fifth.

Selling a turbine overseas is only step one — someone then has to service it for the next twenty years. The report calls for India to build out regional service hubs and spare-parts networks in the markets it's targeting, naming South Africa, Australia, the Philippines and Central Asia specifically. That means training local technicians to international (GWO) standards, having mobile teams ready for the harder repairs, and using SCADA-based remote monitoring backed by AI to catch problems early.

IWTMA argues India needs a coordinated "Brand India Wind" push — one message built around reliability, compliance with international standards and cost competitiveness, carried through global trade expos, government-led trade missions, digital campaigns and partnerships with big international utilities and development banks. It wants that effort tracked properly too, through surveys and market research, rather than left to chance.

Put together, the report's argument is less about India's manufacturing capacity — that part, it says, is already there — and more about everything around it: financing, certification, technology and reputation. Close those gaps, IWTMA suggests, and India's wind industry stops being an opportunistic exporter and becomes a genuine fixture in the global supply chain.