While Indian economy is known for it’s services sector tilt, the industrial sector provides a critical base to the economy with a 27% contribution, and nearly half of it coming from manufacturing sector. The industrial sector is also strategically important in areas such as defence, semiconductor, automotive. First half this decade (2020-25) was a period of intense growth and transformation for the Indian industrial sector. A pandemic, evolving geopolitics, emergence of GenAI, real push on sustainability occupied agenda of industry leaders.
Thinking ahead for 2030, how are Indian industries thinking about placing their big-bets for the next 5 years? A 10-12% nominal CAGR could arguably be termed Business-as-usual in Indian scenario. Are there opportunities for new segment creation and new business areas? There are many discontinuities across sectors which industry players will be keenly watching. These are summarised in form of 5 big-bets in this article. These bets present potential to grow multi-fold in coming five to seven years. These not only provide business opportunities but are essential for continued economic progress towards realizing Vision of becoming a developed nation in coming decades.
- Defence manufacturing
Defence production in India roughly doubled from 2020 to 2025. And it’s likely that the momentum will sustain given the geopolitical situation and country’s focus on developing self-reliance. With this momentum, defense production will double again by 2030. While led by Government entities (such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited), there is increasingly more private participation as well with private players contributing 23% to production. Opportunities for industries exist not only as OEM, but down the value-chain as Tier-1 and Tier-2 suppliers as well. If the last 5 years growth momentum sustains, the private sector will have an estimated 10-12bn$ defence manufacturing opportunity in 2030.
- Electric cars
While the topic of electric mobility has been discussed at length over last decade, in terms of share of EV in new car sales, India is only starting its journey on electric mobility. EV share in new cars sold was a modest 4% in CY 2025. The absolute numbers are low but growing 80% year-on-year. Global players such as Vinfast and Tesla had their first sales in India market in 2025. The bet here essentially is “will share of EVs in new cars grow to circa. 25% by 2030”? Because if it does, it would mean an estimated 10x increase in electric car sales volume. This will provide an unprecedent scale of opportunity to EV value-chain player e.g., in structural parts, battery packs, EV electronics, on-board chargers. The EV specific components and assemblies will generate a new market of the magnitude of $20-25bn. It’s going to be a ‘once in a 100 years’ opportunity for Indian businesses in this space.
- Semiconductor assembly and packaging
India is pursuing increasing self-reliance in semiconductors. 10 semiconductor plans are approved under India Semiconductor Mission with a combined capex of ~18bn$. Assembly and Testing units are likely to come up first with 4 announced plans having a combined capex of ~8bn$. First of these plants did a pilot production in 2025. Four semiconductor plants are targeting to start commercial production in 2026. If the announced capacities indeed come online in the timelines committed, it would be a massive new segment creation. The clustering approach works in this sector – 24 out of 25 biggest chip packaging facilities are in East Asia or Southeast Asia. If initial enterprises prove successful, India can look to open 5-6 more such facilities. One can look at Taiwan on how it started with semiconductor assembly and packaging and built onto it to become a major chip production country, now housing world’s largest semiconductor FAB capacity.
- Railway rolling-stock
India’s union budget capex spend for railways rolling-stock has reached ~6.5bn$. This includes spending on coaches, locomotives, and wagons. The average production per year for locomotives is doubling every decade. India produced more locomotives in 2024-25 than US and Europe combined. Annual average coach production has doubled from ~2500 in 2015 to ~5000 in 2025 as old ICF design coaches are replaced with new LHB design coaches. With huge expansion planned for Railways and city-based Metro projects, the growth momentum is expected to continue. OEM play is almost exclusively in the domain of government owned factories for Railway coaches and locomotives. Private sector will have Tier-1/tier-2 supplier opportunities for Railways and OEM opportunities in Metro projects.
- Data centres
As India makes real strides on digital innovation for it’s billion plus population, the demand for data storage is exploding. India reportedly generates 20% of world’s data but hosts only 3% of it.
The sector is deemed as infrastructure since 2022. India has 1.4GW of operational data centre capacity with another 6.4 GW in planning/execution stages. Investments required to get this entire capacity online approach 100bn$ in magnitude. All big industrial houses, in partnerships with global PE majors and tech majors (including leading GenAI LLMs), are jumping in the fray to invest in data centres. The manufacturing opportunity areas will be across IT hardware (servers, switches, storage, fibre optic links), power and electrical systems (transformers, switchgears), and cooling systems (chillers, HVAC).
In management practices, identifying ‘where to play’ – the business areas a company wants to compete in – often determines most of value generated. These 5 areas will present substantial opportunities to Indian industries, both incumbents and new players. They will need to identify their niches in these, business models, and the ‘how to’ compete.
Prof. Abhishek Agrawal
MYRA School of Business
21st January 2026
