Fun Zoo Toys is an Indian manufacturing success story. The maker of heart-shaped cushions and "Little Ganesha” dolls started out as a family business in 1979 and has grown to be one of the nation’s major manufacturers of fluffy toys.
Sales doubled after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "Made-in-India" push saw import duties on toys ramped up from 20% to 70% over three years to 2023. But that’s just half of the story: The production surge to meet those sales wouldn’t have been possible without raw materials such as metallic pins, integrated circuits and LEDs imported from China.
"We have just introduced electronic toys and the challenge we are facing is that mini toy motors used in that are not being made here,” says Naresh Kumar Gupta who runs the company near New Delhi with his wife Santosh Gupta. "Making metallic pins which are fixed along with the gears and motors to make the rotations is a challenge here.”