India is targeting $100 billion in gems and jewellery exports by 2040, up from roughly $28 billion in 2025-26. The roadmap was laid out at the “Chintan Shivir – 2040 Roadmap for Gems & Jewellery”, a high-level dialogue convened by the Department of Commerce alongside the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC). Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal framed the ambition directly: “The real catalyst for elevating India’s gems and jewellery sector from around USD 28 billion to USD 100 billion lies in building a comprehensive ecosystem driven by innovation, global design leadership and trust.”
That framing matters more than it might first appear, because it marks a real shift in how the government is talking about this target and even in the target itself.
The Timeline Just Got More Aggressive
Worth noting upfront: as recently as November 2025, GJEPC’s own public messaging, including at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Modi, was built around reaching $100 billion in exports by 2047, alongside a $500 billion domestic market. The Chintan Shivir roadmap pulls that same $100 billion figure forward by seven years, to 2040. That’s not a small adjustment. It signals the government and industry now believe the value-addition strategy can compress a target that was, until recently, framed as a 22-year journey into roughly a 14-year one, a meaningful vote of confidence in the underlying strategy, but also a considerably higher bar to actually clear.
Manufacturing Alone Won’t Get There
India already has genuine strengths here: deep manufacturing capability, skilled craftsmanship, and established export networks that have made it one of the world’s largest gem and jewellery processing hubs. But GJEPC Chairman Kirit Bhansali was explicit that the next phase depends on “accelerating value addition, expanding finished jewellery exports and leveraging India’s world-class craftsmanship and manufacturing capabilities”, not simply producing more volume.
The distinction matters because value doesn’t distribute evenly across a jewellery product’s journey from raw material to retail shelf. Design, branding and finished-product ownership tend to capture disproportionately more value than cutting, polishing or assembly, the stages India has traditionally dominated. A manufacturer can produce an excellent piece and still capture only a fraction of what it eventually sells for once branded, marketed and retailed by someone else. That’s the core problem the 2040 roadmap is actually trying to solve.
Where the Real Opportunity Sits
The Chintan Shivir deliberations were structured around five priority missions: global market access, MSME scale-up, export-import fast tracking, the “Crafted by India” branding push, and next-generation talent and design. Officials also pointed to an addressable market of $128 billion across the midstream and downstream segments of the value chain, a figure that underlines just how much value currently sits outside pure manufacturing, in design, branding and finished-product positioning.
Free trade agreements add another layer of opportunity. GJEPC has pointed to FTA partner markets collectively importing more than $55 billion in jewellery annually, with the India-EU FTA specifically expected to help double bilateral gem and jewellery trade toward $10 billion. But access alone doesn’t guarantee exports; Indian companies still need products that match market-specific preferences, competitive pricing, reliable delivery, and increasingly, brand recognition strong enough to compete with the international names consumers already trust.
Manufacturing Insight: Technology Has to Support Craftsmanship, Not Replace It
Technology is reshaping this industry in ways that go beyond automation. CAD and digital design tools are compressing product development timelines that used to take weeks into days. Traceability technology is becoming commercially necessary as global buyers demand verified sourcing, particularly for diamonds and precious metals. And with 65% of India’s studded jewellery exports currently originating from Special Economic Zones, the push for SEZ Act amendments allowing limited domestic sales reflects a sector trying to unlock capacity that’s currently sitting idle due to structural, not demand-side, constraints.
None of this replaces craftsmanship; India’s skilled artisan base remains the sector’s genuine differentiator globally. The opportunity is combining that craftsmanship with digital design, traceability and modern manufacturing consistency so Indian-made pieces can compete on both authenticity and reliability simultaneously.
The Ripple Effect
If the value-addition strategy takes hold, the effects are likely to extend across a fairly wide ecosystem. Design studios and CAD technology providers stand to gain as finished, design-led jewellery becomes the sector’s stated priority over commodity-grade processing. MSME manufacturers, who make up the vast majority of the industry, face both opportunity and a real capability gap; most will need access to shared facilities, digital design training and financing to participate in higher-value segments rather than remain confined to subcontracted processing work. Testing, certification and traceability service providers gain a growing role as global buyers demand verified provenance, particularly given rising scrutiny around lab-grown versus natural diamonds. Branding, marketing and e-commerce specialists become newly relevant to an industry that has historically competed on manufacturing cost rather than consumer-facing brand equity. And logistics and trade-compliance providers benefit from the push toward faster export-import processing and AI-driven customs digitisation, both explicitly named as priorities in the roadmap.
The Bigger Picture
India already knows how to manufacture gems and jewellery at scale; that was never really in question. The harder, more consequential challenge behind the $100 billion target by 2040 is whether India can shift enough of the value chain, design, branding, and finished-product ownership onto Indian soil, rather than continuing to export craftsmanship that gets branded and sold at a premium somewhere else. The roadmap compressing its own timeline by seven years suggests real institutional confidence in that shift. Whether India’s manufacturing base, particularly its MSMEs, can actually build the capabilities to match that ambition is the question the next decade will answer.