Leading India’s Next Phase of Manufacturing

What will it take for India to build a truly future-ready manufacturing ecosystem? This question ran through the CFI × MMA Manufacturing Leadership Forum, where industry leaders looked at the present and future of India’s manufacturing future, its talent, and its leadership in the global context.

Keynote: Think Bigger

Mr. Josh Foulger, President – IT Hardware and New Projects, Dixon Technologies India Limited, urged India to move beyond its comfort and incremental growth. As hubs like Vietnam grow stronger, India’s opportunity lies not just in scaling component assembly, but in building deeper, higher-value capabilities and the capacity to compete globally.

Panel 1: Making Manufacturing the Sector of Choice for High Potential Talent

Some powerful perspectives that emerged from this panel discussion:

• Giving young talent responsibility early, with room to take risks, make mistakes and learn.
• Offering a strong employee value proposition: flexible work, better infrastructure, career pathways, training and life skills.
• Hiring for attitude, drive, curiosity and learning ability, not just years of experience.
• Seeing AI and technology as a way to reshape manufacturing, not as a threat to jobs.
• Bringing younger voices into the room to challenge established ways of thinking.

The most compelling takeaway: Successful factories and leaders of the future will be those who are able to achieve synergy between humans, AI, robotics, and software together.

Panel 2: The Manufacturing Leader of the Future

Moderated by Ms. Saroja Kannan, Executive and Leadership Coach, the panel featured Mr. Premendra, Chief Strategy Officer, ELGI Equipments Limited, and Mr. Shyam C Raman, CHRO, Carborundum Universal Ltd – Murugappa Group.

Their core message: principles should endure, but practices must change. Customer focus, quality, reliability and discipline remain foundational. Leaders, however, must shift from firefighting to foresight, authority to empowerment, expertise to curiosity, and from solving problems alone to building leadership capacity at scale. 

The panel left us with a question to reflect on: “Are we using our experience or is our experience using us?”

Valedictory Address: Leading in Our Own Right

Mr. RaviChandran Purushothaman, President, Danfoss India and Chair, CII Southern Region 2026–27, challenged the China + 1 narrative. He opined that India must find its own “sweet spots” and build the capabilities to lead in them. The window is short, and the next five years are critical. Success needs speed, focus, and investment in human capital as much as physical capital, supplier ecosystems, skills, industry–academia partnerships, and sustainable manufacturing.

This was followed by an engaging Q&A session hosted by Mr. Ganesh Chella, Co-founder & Chief Solution Architect, CFI, on India’s manufacturing identity, human capital, skills and industry’s role.

Food for Thought

If the next five years are India’s window of opportunity, what must manufacturing leaders do faster or differently to lead the next phase of global manufacturing?