India’s repair culture gives new life to dead laptops
In a dimly lit, cluttered workshop in Delhi’s Nehru Place, the air hums with the sound of whirring drills and the crackle of soldering irons. Sushil Prasad, a 35-year-old technician, wipes the sweat off his brow as he carefully pieces together the guts of an old laptop. It is a daily ritual — resurrecting machines by stitching together motherboards, screens, and batteries scavenged from other trashed older laptops and e-waste — to create functional, low-cost devices.
“India has always had a repair culture … but companies are pushing planned obsolescence”
“Right now, there is a huge demand for such ‘hybrid’ laptops,” Prasad says, his hands swapping out a damaged motherboard. “Most people don’t care about having the latest model; they just want something that works and won’t break the bank.”
Across India, in metro markets from Delhi’s Nehru Place to Mumbai’s Lamington Road, technicians like Prasad are repurposing broken and outdated laptops that many see as junk. These “Frankenstein” machines — hybrids of salvaged parts from multiple brands — are sold to students, gig workers, and small businesses, offering a lifeline to those priced out of India’s growing digital economy.
“We take usable components from different older or discarded systems to create a new functioning unit. For instance, we salvage parts from old laptop motherboards, such as capacitors, mouse pads, transistors, diodes, and certain ICs and use them in the newly refurbished ones,” says Prasad.
As he explains, Manohar Singh, the owner of the workshop-slash-store where Prasad works, flips open a refurbished laptop while sitting on a rickety stool. The screen flickers to life, displaying a crisp image. He smiles — a sign that another machine has been successfully revived.
“We literally make them out of scrap! We also take in second-hand laptops and e-waste from countries like Dubai and China, fix them up, and sell them at half the price of a new one,” he explains.
“A college student or a freelancer can get a good machine for INR 10,000 [about $110 USD] instead of spending INR 70,000 [about $800 USD] on a brand-new one. For many, that difference means being able to work or study at all.”
Singh recalls a young engineering student who visited his shop last year, desperate for a laptop to complete his coursework. “He had saved up for months but was still short of money. I put together a machine for him from spare parts, and he left with tears in his eyes. That is when you know this work matters.”
But this booming market does not exist in isolation. It is entangled with a much larger battle, one between small repair technicians and global technology giants. While these Frankenstein laptops are a lifeline for many, the repair industry itself faces significant roadblocks. Many global manufacturers deliberately make repairs difficult by restricting access to spare parts, using proprietary screws, and implementing software locks that force customers to buy new devices instead of fixing old ones.
Satish Sinha, associate director at Toxics Link, a nonprofit working on waste management, believes repair technicians like Prasad and Singh are on the front lines of a larger battle.
“India has always had a repair culture, from fixing old radios to hand-me-down phones. But companies are pushing planned obsolescence, making repairs harder and forcing people to buy new devices instead,” Sinha says.
“We need to encourage such reuse of materials. These repaired or new hybrid devices minimize waste by extending a product’s lifespan and reducing overall market waste. Reusing components cuts down on the need for new materials, lowering energy use, resource extraction, and environmental impact,” Sinha adds.
“These parts would end up in a landfill otherwise.”
The Indian government has started discussions on right-to-repair laws, inspired by similar efforts in the European Union and the United States. However, progress remains slow, and repair shops continue to operate in legal limbo, often forced to source different parts from informal and e-waste markets.
As a result, many repair technicians have no choice but to rely on informal supply chains, with markets like Delhi’s Seelampur — India’s largest e-waste hub — becoming a critical way to source spare parts. Seelampur processes approximately 30,000 tonnes (33,069 tons) of e-waste daily, providing employment to nearly 50,000 informal workers who extract valuable materials from it. The market is a chaotic maze of discarded electronics, where workers sift through mountains of broken circuit boards, tangled wires, and cracked screens, searching for usable parts.
Farooq Ahmed, an 18-year-old scrap dealer, has spent the last four years sourcing laptop components for technicians like Prasad. “We find working RAM sticks, motherboards with minor faults, batteries that still hold charge and sell it to different electronic workshops,” he says. “These parts would end up in a landfill otherwise.”
But while e-waste salvaging provides cheap repair materials, it comes at a steep price. Without proper safety measures, workers handle toxic materials such as lead, mercury, and cadmium daily. “I cough a lot,” Ahmed admits with a sheepish grin. “But what can I do? This work feeds my family.”
Despite the dangers, the demand for Frankenstein systems continues to grow. And as India’s digital economy expands, the need for such affordable technology will only increase. Many believe that integrating the repair sector into the formal economy could bring about a win-win situation, reducing e-waste, creating jobs, and making technology more accessible.
“If the government recognizes independent repair businesses, gives them access to spare parts, and sets quality standards, we can transform this industry,” Sinha says.
But for now, in dimly lit workshops across the country, men like Prasad and Singh continue their work, reviving the dead, bridging the digital divide, and proving that, in India, the repair ecosystem is set to thrive.
