# Engineering leads India’s professional services export surge to $13.8 bn 2026-08-24T06:40:50+00:00 | Governance | Indian Opinion Desk Corroboration: 1 independent outlet Engineering services exports from India surged from Rs 12,226 crore ($1.8 billion) in 2014-15 to Rs 1,09,849 crore ($13.8 billion) in 2024-25, a 22.8% compound annual growth rate, according to a NITI Aayog report. This makes engineering the largest single driver of India's professional services exports, which as a whole grew 18% annually over the same decade. The services sector now accounts for 55% of India's GDP. The report highlights a sharp contrast in regulatory openness. Engineering ranks 38th globally on the OECD Services Trade Restrictiveness Index with a low score of 0.155. In contrast, legal services are India's most restricted sub-sector with a score of 0.865, and accounting ranks 4th most restrictive worldwide at 0.762. Legal exports grew only from Rs 6,801 crore ($852 million) to Rs 10,209 crore ($1.3 billion) in the same period. India is now the world's seventh-largest services exporter with a 4.3% global market share. The growth is supported by about 1,700 Global Capability Centres employing 1.9 million professionals in AI, financial modelling and legal analytics. The NITI Aayog report recommends modernising regulations in law and accounting to unlock further export potential, with professions like engineering already showing the gains of minimal oversight. ## Indian Opinion Analysis The NITI Aayog report puts hard numbers behind what has been anecdotally known: India's services export boom is far from uniform. Engineering, with minimal regulatory barriers, has grown into a $13.8 billion export engine. Legal and accounting services earn far less despite having a larger domestic talent pool because restrictive rules, such as the ban on foreign law firms practising Indian law or the bar on auditing firms accepting equity investments, block scale. The Global Capability Centres are the real story: over 1,900 centres now employ 1.9 million people in roles that did not exist a decade ago. These centres are also the strongest lobby for regulatory reform inside India, because their parent companies want to use Indian talent for global compliance and analytics work. The next signal to watch will be whether the Centre brings a services trade reform bill to the monsoon session of Parliament, as NITI Aayog has been pushing for since 2022. ## Coverage - factly.in Data-driven framing without editorialising, led by engineering exports growth vs regulatory restrictiveness This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above. Tags: engineering services, global capability centres, NITI Aayog, OECD, RBI Canonical: https://indianopinion.org/engineering-leads-indias-professional-services-export-surge-to-13-8-bn/ License: Summary and commentary (c) Indian Opinion, reusable with attribution. Facts belong to the linked sources. Cite: https://indianopinion.org/engineering-leads-indias-professional-services-export-surge-to-13-8-bn/#story-in-brief Review state: restored archive article, accurate at time of publication, not offered to search indexes. How this brief was made: an AI model read the report linked above and wrote this summary and analysis, which were published automatically. Published briefs are sampled every hour by an automated quality check; the editor verifies its findings and approves corrections, and corrected briefs carry a dated correction line. We do no original reporting. Methodology: https://indianopinion.org/ai-use-policy/