The purpose of the study is to explore dividend behaviour of Indian manufacturing and service sector firms and to investigate similarities/differences between the same. First, the analysis is conducted using pooled, fixed and random effects OLS regression for panel data on 452 manufacturing and service sector firms for the period of 2007–2015. Further, dynamic panel data analysis has been used to deal with the heteroscedasticity and endogeneity issues among the variables for the study to capture asymptotic efficient estimates. The result refutes significant differences in terms of firm-level factors that determines dividend policy. However, manufacturing sector is significantly efficient in declaring dividends (59.63 per cent) in comparison to service sector (34.33 per cent). Further analysis suggests that firm size and cash holdings have significant positive relationship to dividend paid, whereas age and net working capital are negatively significant for dividend declarations in the service sector. However, the analysis of manufacturing sector suggests that profitability and firm size and profitability are positively significant, while net working capital is negatively significant for dividend decisions.