India may view the Il-114-300 primarily as a tool for establishing its own aircraft manufacturing industry, rather than as a replacement for its regional aircraft fleet. This conclusion was reached by an aviation expert from the SkyExpert analytical blog, commenting on OAK's agreements with Indian companies regarding the supply of Russian turboprop airliners.

According to his assessment, the actual demand for the Il-114-300 in the Indian market is limited: on many domestic routes, passenger traffic allows for larger Airbus A320s to be filled, while turboprop ATRs are not in such high demand in the country to warrant a large-scale fleet replacement. Much more appealing to New Delhi is production localization – the opportunity to acquire its own industrial base for manufacturing passenger aircraft.

Essentially, the country will gain its own site for assembling Russian aircraft and begin to develop competencies in civil aircraft manufacturing.

The expert also noted another problem. The documents signed with Indian carriers should not yet be automatically perceived as guaranteed orders for serial production aircraft: some of the companies, in his estimation, can hardly be called full-fledged air carriers.

Direct deliveries of Russian aircraft to existing Indian airlines, moreover, could create sanction risks for them, so it would be more logical for the project to use a new carrier through which a separate cooperation structure could be built.