Home Minister approved Make in India waiver for the NIA’s ₹4.98 crore Cellebrite licence

01How the preference works

The preference comes from an order of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, issued under the General Financial Rules and last revised on 19 July 2024. It sorts suppliers by local content, the share of value added in India: at least 50% makes a Class-I local supplier, at least 20% Class-II, and anything less non-local. Unless a global tender has been issued, only Class-I and Class-II suppliers may bid, and below ₹200 crore a global tender itself needs special approval. A Class-I bidder within 20% of the lowest price is invited to match it. Purchases under ₹5 lakh sit outside the order.⁴

The arithmetic matters for software. Licence fees, royalties and technical charges paid abroad do not count as local content, and neither do imported items bought from resellers or distributors in India.⁴ On our reading of the order, a foreign company’s licence sold through an Indian reseller scores little, so a buyer wanting one named foreign product needs a waiver. An Indian software supplier should run the same sum before bidding.

02How a waiver is granted

Paragraph 14 names the route. The department running a purchase, including for any body under its control, may “with the approval of their Minister-in-charge”, and “by written order, for reasons to be recorded in writing”, lower the local-content level or the price margin, or “exempt any particular item or supplying entities from the operation of this Order”.⁴ The NIA falls under the Home Ministry.² The letter records the concurrence of the ministry’s finance division on 13 January and the Minister’s approval on a note dated 17 January.¹ IFF says it has not seen that note and has asked for it under the Right to Information Act; what we cite is the letter.³

A similar exemption is on record. A Home Ministry letter of 20 March 2025 cleared 19 forensic products for the Delhi Police Crime Branch’s cyber lab under the same paragraph of the order’s 2020 version, including Cellebrite’s UFED 4PC, conveying the approval of “the Competent Authority”.⁵

03What the bid records

The bid is marked “PAC Only”, for a Proprietary Article Certificate. The NIA’s certificate, headed Rule 166 of the General Financial Rules, names Cellebrite DI Ltd of Petah Tikva, Israel, as “the sole developer & proprietor” and says “No other make or model is acceptable.”⁶ Competition therefore runs among sellers of one product: distributors must show the maker’s authorisation, bidders need an average turnover of ₹2.45 crore, and a reverse auction is enabled.²

Against the Make in India preference the NIA entered “No”. It named “Shri Amit Shah”, “Hon’ble Home Minister of India”, as the competent authority, with this reason: “As no other Company is manufacturing the software with same name and specifications”.² IFF says every GeM bid carries such a field, which makes a waiver visible to anyone who reads the bid.³

On the length of the licence, the records differ. The letter and the NIA’s technical specification say three years.¹⁷ The bid’s model line reads as a one-year subscription and its standard fields ask for one year of updates, while its additional parameters, with which bidders “must also comply”, set three years of updates and a three-year subscription.²

The records cover how the tool was bought. IFF reports that no law, rule or published procedure in India states when a seized phone may be unlocked, what may be copied, how long the copy may be kept or who may read it.³