Where India Is Heading: Mobility, Manufacturing and Physical SI

To understand where India is heading, stand at a busy intersection in any large Indian city for ten minutes. You will see scooters, motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, buses, cars, trucks, cyclists and pedestrians, all negotiating the same space with remarkable fluency. It looks like chaos. It is a highly adaptive system.

That intersection is a metaphor for the country. India does not follow the script other economies wrote. It improvises, scales and finds its own path. After years with Indian partners, engineers and automakers, I am convinced that companies who understand this will find one of the great growth opportunities of the next two decades. Those who do not will keep wondering why their playbook failed.

A mobility story that starts with two and three wheels

Global mobility talk usually starts with cars. In India, they should start with two- and three-wheelers. India is one of the world’s largest two-wheeler markets, and for hundreds of millions the scooter or motorcycle is family, work and delivery vehicle at once.

That is also where electrification moves fastest. Electric three-wheelers, especially e-rickshaws, spread quickly because the operator’s economics are obvious: lower running costs, simpler maintenance and a business that pays back. Electric scooters are following. Cars are electrifying more gradually.

Lesson for global companies: volume and innovation often sit in segments they consider low end. Battery swapping, ruggedized motors, fleet financing, low-cost telematics: many of India’s most interesting mobility ideas are built for vehicles that cost a fraction of a car.

Manufacturing: from intent to execution

For years, India’s manufacturing ambition outran its execution. That is changing. Programs such as Make in India and the Production Linked Incentive schemes give companies concrete reasons to build locally across electronics, automotive components, batteries and drones. Major global electronics brands now assemble smartphones in India at significant scale, which sounded unlikely not long ago.

Many multinationals also see India as part of a resilience strategy, adding capacity outside their existing footprint rather than relying on one country. India benefits, but seeing it only as a backup location is a mistake. Its domestic market justifies local manufacturing on its own merits.

Challenges remain: infrastructure gaps, land and logistics complexity, uneven regulation across states, and supplier ecosystems still deepening in some precision categories. But the direction is clear, and the pace has picked up.

Talent is the underrated asset

India produces huge numbers of engineering graduates yearly, and its software depth is well known. Less appreciated: much of that talent now does hard engineering for global companies through large R&D and capability centers in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.

With Indian OEMs and engineering teams, I often find one strength: frugal, practical problem solving. Teams routinely build products that must work in heat, dust, monsoon rain and rough roads, at prices most Western engineers would call impossible. That mindset is exactly what machines need as intelligence moves from labs into the real world.

India’s digital public infrastructure is another structural advantage. Identity and instant payment systems such as Aadhaar and UPI show how quickly the country adopts technology at population scale when the foundations are right. Similar thinking is emerging in logistics and mobility.

Drones and the logistics opportunity

India’s drone story shows policy moving from caution to enablement. Regulators liberalized the framework significantly in recent years, and incentive programs now include drone manufacturing. The result is a fast-growing ecosystem of drone companies in agriculture, mapping, inspection and delivery.

I see the biggest long-term impact in logistics. India’s geography, traffic and last-mile challenges make aerial delivery more than a novelty for certain uses: medical supplies, urgent parts, hard-to-reach areas, and middle-mile links between hubs. That is partly why I invested in Airbound, an Indian drone-logistics startup. India can become a place where drone logistics is proven at scale, not just piloted.

Drones are also a practical form of Physical SI: they perceive, decide and act in the physical world, under real constraints of weather, airspace and safety. Those lessons will carry over to ground robots and, eventually, humanoids.

What global technology companies get wrong about India

I have watched many international companies approach India. Those that struggle make the same mistakes:

• Treating price as a compromise rather than a design requirement. In India, cost is not cut at the end. It shapes the architecture from the start.
• Assuming India is one market. Languages, road conditions, income levels and regulations vary enormously across states. A national strategy needs regional execution.
• Copying a playbook from China or the West. India’s sequence is different: two-wheelers before cars, mobile before desktop, services before manufacturing in many sectors. Plans that ignore that sequence miss the market.
• Building for India from outside India. Products designed remotely and localized later rarely fit. The winners put real engineering and decision rights in the country.
• Expecting quick returns. India rewards patience and relationships. Companies that come for one cycle and leave lose credibility for years.

For autonomous driving, India is also one of the hardest environments on earth. Mixed traffic, informal lane discipline and enormous variety in road users make it a brutal test for perception and planning. That is an opportunity: systems that work on Indian roads will be robust anywhere.

My view

India is not the next China, and it need not be. It is building its own model: a large, young domestic market, deep engineering talent, fast digital adoption and a manufacturing base growing with real policy support.

For companies in Physical SI, from vehicles to drones to robots, India offers a market, a manufacturing option and a talent pool at once. Few countries offer all three.

My advice is simple. Go to India with a long horizon. Build there, not just sell there. Design for its price points and its roads. And listen closely to Indian partners, because what they build for their own conditions will increasingly be what the rest of the world adopts.