An Investor’s Guide to
India
Five sectors to watch in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
For investors optimistic about the India growth story, Hyderabad is tough to beat as Exhibit A.
In the city’s financial district, construction cranes dot a skyline dominated by the world’s wealthiest corporate brands. Several years ago, Amazon.com Inc. opened its largest campus here. A few steps away, Google LLC is planning the same thing. A dirt pit covered in scaffolding will soon house the tech firm’s biggest hub outside Silicon Valley.
Stroll through Knowledge City, Hyderabad’s business park, and it’s not hard to sense the ambition. Microsoft Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have a presence here, along with India’s most promising startups. Cocktail bars border an open-air plaza with water installations. Everything is glass and steel and logos.
This, India’s fans argue, is where the world’s fastest-growing major economy is headed. And the message from the top is bell-clear: Pump in your money or risk missing out.
“We’ve learned from what happened in the past,” said Suresh Goyal, the chief executive of NHAI InvIT, a trust that allows individuals and institutions to invest in India’s infrastructure projects. “We understand what works and what doesn’t.”
Of course, investors, hedge funds and private equity firms have heard this pitch before. After India liberalized its markets three decades ago, big business pounced at the opportunity to tap a population that stands today at 1.4 billion people.
Every few years, agenda-setters on Wall Street or at Davos sell a rosy picture about India. Sometimes the predictions pan out. Over the past decade, a digitization drive has nearly doubled tax revenue and cut down on corruption. Other times, corporates have been tortured by a still-bloated bureaucracy and the fickleness of price-conscious consumers. Look no further than General Motors Co.’s struggles to manufacture vehicles here.
But to many, this decade, and the next, remain India’s to lose. The South Asian nation is now the fifth-largest economy, with improving infrastructure and the most billion-dollar companies behind the US and China. Apple Inc. makes iPhones in Tamil Nadu, and data tariffs are among the cheapest anywhere. Many global manufacturers see India as a solid backup if trade relations with China continue to fray.
While India’s markets have shown recent signs of stress, including a sizeable stock selloff, there, too, the country has projected itself as nimble. Government bonds were finally included in JPMorgan’s biggest emerging-market global index last year. The startup scene in cities like Bengaluru is encouraging big swings. And India’s large domestic market is likely to serve as a counterweight to President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs.
Bloomberg News spoke to dozens of bankers, financial analysts and entrepreneurs to dig into five of the industries shaping modern India. This list is in no way comprehensive, but it is diverse. What unites the companies is that they’re rooted in fast-growing sectors, separating themselves from the pack in unique ways, and mining underexplored corners in one of the world’s most promising markets.
Global Capability Centers
“Given our critical mass, volume, velocity and value of work being done, if India were to pause, the world would feel the ripple effects immediately.”
Verizon Communications Inc.’s GCC, which began as a back-office operation with 60 people in 2004, has evolved into an innovation hub with more than 7,000 employees. From rolling out the firm’s 5G efforts, to developing AI to make customer calls more efficient, the center has become a catalyst of transformation for Verizon.
These initiatives are instrumental in helping retain customers in the US, a “saturated market” where “retention is the new acquisition,” said Vijaraman Subramanian, India managing director at Verizon.
Aerospace and Defense
“There is a comfort level with India that this industry does not have with China.”
Hyderabad-based JEH Aerospace is emerging as a key supplier of components to Tier 2 and Tier 3 aerospace companies in a global industry worth around $900 billion. As Boeing Co. and Airbus SE struggle with backlogs due to quality control issues and supply chain disruptions, demand is rising for reliable suppliers that can deliver on time.
Founded in 2022 by Vishal Sanghvi and Venkatesh Mudragalla, JEH Aerospace has already secured over $100 million in orders. Its clients include suppliers for General Electric Co.’s aero engines, and the world’s largest engine tooling manufacturer. To meet growing demand, the company plans to expand its workforce by 30% in the first quarter this year.
Consumer Goods
“There is still a long runway for growth [for Lenskart].”
India is proving to be a market ripe for scale, with homegrown businesses expanding beyond its borders. Eyewear retailer Lenskart, founded in 2010, is gaining traction overseas after disrupting the domestic market by cutting out middlemen and making premium eyeglasses more affordable.
In a sector once dominated by small, independent sellers where generic eyeglasses were seen as a commodity, Lenskart has built a recognizable brand. By shifting consumers toward a branded product, the company is tapping into one of India’s biggest retail opportunities — bringing quality control and consumer trust to turn an informal market into a structured, scalable business.
“If you look at the population, the disposable income, the need-gap, there is a huge consumption story in India,” said Peyush Bansal, Lenskart’s chief executive officer. The company has expanded aggressively, acquiring Japan’s Owndays in 2022. Today, it operates in nearly 20 countries with over 2,500 stores across Asia — 2,000 of them in India.
Digital Economy
“We moved our IDfy investment into a continuation fund in 2021, and it has already delivered a 5x return since.”
Mumbai-based IDfy started as a background verification service but evolved alongside India’s digital boom. By tapping into digitized police records and personal identification systems, it developed secure verification solutions for financial firms operating under stringent regulations.
As digital banking accelerated during the pandemic, IDfy’s technology became crucial for everything, from opening bank accounts to small business lending. Demand has soared under India’s new compliance standards, with clients including Hindustan Unilever Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd. and American Express Co.
IDfy turned its first profit in 2023, and is poised for faster growth, co-founder Ashok Hariharan said. Nearly 90% of all customer verification processes are still analog, making them vulnerable to data leaks and fraud, he said, adding that interest in their products had increased significantly in recent months.
Infrastructure
“The deal sizes have become much larger. With renewable energy, $200 to $300 million is par for the course.”
Green energy is an increasingly vital sector as fossil fuel usage is declining and renewables need to fill the gap to power India’s 1.4 billion people. Firms like Greenko Group, a leading company working on decarbonization, are tapping into India’s vast natural resources. Since its founding about two decades ago, Greenko has evolved from running a 21 MW biomass plant to having almost 10,000 MW of operational capacity across wind, solar and hydro projects in 15 Indian states.
(Corrects to show that IDfy became profitable in 2023, not 2024.)
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