Light industry is small in scale, suitable for factory units on industrial estates, while heavy industry involves big plants covering large areas of land. Light industry needs only limited amounts of capital investment, while heavy industry is capital intensive, needing big investments to set up. Light industry are industries that usually are less capital-intensive than heavy industry and are more consumer-oriented than business-oriented, as they typically produce smaller consumer goods.
The Most light industry products are produced for end users rather than as intermediates for use by other industries. heavy Industry in India comprises of the heavy engineering industry, machine tool industry, heavy electrical industry, industrial machinery and auto-industry.
However, innovative new energy industries such as solar panel manufacturing are light industry and have the benefit of being less capital intensive. Other examples include biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal power, solar heating, wind power, solar thermal power, and other modern forms of bioenergy.