In September, Bhagwati Products made a headline-grabbing claim.

The little-known electronics manufacturer, once known as smartphone maker Micromax Informatics’s assembly arm, announced that it would grow its topline to Rs 15,000 crore by FY26. From just about Rs 650 crore in FY24.

That’s a 25X jump in two years. And in a market that has, by most measures, remained flat in the period.

In India’s exuberant manufacturing sector, where PLI-linked projections often sound too aspirational, that number didn’t raise too many eyebrows. But Bhagwati isn’t Foxconn or even Dixon Technologies; it was a much-less-talked-about company whose last big year was back in 2016.

There’s been no blockbuster product or marquee Indian client, and no visible shift in the smartphone market that could justify such a leap.

So where’s all this growth coming from?

That question leads straight to Rahul Sharma, Micromax’s co-founder and once the poster boy for “Make in India”. And to China, the country whose smartphone giants buried his brand a decade ago—and are now powering his resurrection.

Last August, Shanghai-based Huaqin Technologies, one of China’s biggest original design manufacturers (ODMs), bought 49% of Bhagwati for Rs 514 crore. The deal valued the company just over Rs 1,000 crore, but did something far more consequential: it plugged Bhagwati directly into Huaqin’s order pipeline. Soon, Oppo and Vivo contracts began to flow in.

And it shows. From practically invisible in mid-2024 to 8% of India’s smartphone-manufacturing output by mid-2025, according to analytics firm Counterpoint Research. That made Bhagwati the fastest-growing phonemaker in the country—on paper, at least.

Now, nearly all of Bhagwati’s new business comes from Chinese smartphone brands, routed through its new shareholder. And that arrangement thrives in part because of a temporary geopolitical thaw. India has allowedBusiness StandardIndia may ease Chinese FDI rules as relations with Beijing improve a handful of Chinese JVs recently, as Donald Trump-era tariffs pushed Beijing’s manufacturers to look for friendlier bases.

But what happens when India and the US mend their ties—and Washington’s trade war with Beijing cools?