India Sourcing Case Studies: What Apple, Walmart, IKEA and Small Buyers Did

In December 2020, Walmart promised to triple what it buys from India to US$10 billion a year by 2027 (Walmart, Dec 2020 (opens in a new tab)). That's a public, dated promise from the world's biggest retailer, and it's a good place to start if you want to know how serious buyers actually approach India. This post looks at four real cases, what each company did, and what you can borrow if you're a lot smaller than they are.

Every case here is sourced from company statements, filings, government figures or first-hand buyer accounts, and I've kept the ones I couldn't verify out. That's also my honest caveat. Big companies publish their wins, not their mistakes, so the corporate cases tell you the strategy and the forum accounts tell you where it hurts.

1. Apple: Bring The Maker You Already Trust

Apple's India story is the one everybody quotes, and the numbers are genuinely big. Apple joined India's production-linked incentive scheme for phones in 2021-22, and by December 2025 more than US$50 billion of iPhones had been exported from India, according to India's IT minister (TrendForce, Jan 2026 (opens in a new tab), Reported). About US$16 billion of that shipped in just the nine months to December 2025 (same source).

The strategy wasn't to find new Indian suppliers from scratch. Apple's assembly in India runs through five plants - two operated by Foxconn, its long-standing contract maker, and three by Tata group companies - supported by around 45 component suppliers (same source, Reported). In other words, Apple moved a proven process into India with makers who already knew its standards, and it used a government incentive to help pay for the move.

What can a small buyer borrow? Not the scale, obviously. But the principle travels. If you're moving a product from China, ask your current maker whether they, or a partner, already produce in India. And treat India's incentives as a sign of where capacity is being built, which the why India page covers category by category. The other honest lesson is that India assembles more than it makes parts, even for Apple, so check where your components will come from.

2. Walmart: Build The Supplier Base, Don't Just Buy From It

Walmart's December 2020 commitment was to go from about US$3 billion of exports from India a year to US$10 billion by 2027, across food, medicines, apparel, homeware, jewellery and hard goods (Walmart, Dec 2020 (opens in a new tab)). The plan leaned on three things - its global sourcing office in Bengaluru, Flipkart's seller programme, and a supplier development programme for small firms called Vriddhi.

The interesting part is the development work. By June 2025, Walmart said Vriddhi had trained more than 70,000 small and medium businesses, with another 100,000 planned by 2028 (Walmart, Jun 2025 (opens in a new tab)). In February 2024 it ran a growth summit with suppliers from 24 states and union territories, and more than 80% of them were invited to the next stage (Walmart, Feb 2024 (opens in a new tab)).

Why would the world's biggest retailer spend money teaching small firms to export? Because India's makers are capable but often not export-ready - the paperwork, the compliance, the packaging and the testing for each market. Walmart decided it was cheaper to grow suppliers than to wait for them. You can't run a training programme, but you can do the small version. Send a clear spec, explain your market's rules and test limits, and be patient through the first order. A maker who learns your standards on order one is worth far more on order five.

3. IKEA: Few Suppliers, Deep Relationships

IKEA's approach is almost the opposite of spreading orders around. It says it buys about €315 million a year from India through 48 suppliers, which support more than 45,000 direct workers and roughly 400,000 in the wider supply chain (IKEA India (opens in a new tab), Supplier-stated). It invests in modern manufacturing technology at its suppliers and sets up new factories with them (same source).

It also checks them, hard. Every IKEA supplier signs up to its IWAY code on child labour, wages, safety and environment, and IKEA says around 80 of its own auditors plus independent third-party auditors enforce it (same source). Its handmade rugs, a category where India is a world leader, sit under the same rules (IKEA, handmade rugs (opens in a new tab)).

The lesson I'd take is focus. Fewer suppliers, known well, checked independently, and helped to get better. For a small buyer that means picking two or three makers rather than ten, writing down the standards you expect, and paying for independent inspection rather than trusting a supplier's photos. How to run those checks is on quality control in India.

4. The Experienced OEM Buyers: Presence, Not Visits

The corporate cases tell you the strategy. The forums tell you what it feels like. In a 2026 thread on buying from India, procurement people with long careers kept landing on the same answer. One, with 20 years of OEM buying, said what worked was "having a foot on the ground (small local team that belongs to you)" (r/procurement, 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Another said, "What helped the most is we had someone based out of there finding and vetting suppliers who knew the area" (r/procurement, 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

The flip side came from a manufacturing buyer - "Only time we got things right from India was when we sent my Indian colleague to the factory". And in the same thread, quality slipped again "the moment he left India" (r/manufacturing, 2025 (opens in a new tab)). An India-based founder had the same experience from the other side: "In India, I personally visited the factories & still could not get the job done" (Hacker News, 2023 (opens in a new tab)).

That's the most consistent finding in all our forum research. A single visit isn't the answer. Presence has to keep going, through sampling, production and the next order. Apple has Foxconn's engineers, Walmart has an office in Bengaluru and IKEA has its auditors. A small buyer needs a version of the same thing, and that's what SourcingSync (opens in a new tab) is for - people in India who stay with the order after you fly home.

What The Four Cases Have In Common

Put them side by side and one pattern runs through all of them. None of these buyers treated India as a place to shop for one order. Apple moved a process, Walmart built suppliers, IKEA went deep with a few, and the OEM buyers kept someone there. The same idea is behind our advice on why India rewards buyers who build over years.

Walmart's 2027 deadline is a year away as I write, and it hasn't said publicly whether it's hit US$10 billion a year. I'll update this post when it does. Whatever the number, the way it went about it - growing the makers rather than just buying from them - is the part worth copying.

One gap to log: we looked for a fifth case, a small or mid-size importer with a documented India move and its numbers, and didn't find one we could verify. If you're that importer and happy to be quoted, write to team@sourcingfrom.com.