The classic European mid-cap entering India, now gated by a certification regime most haven't budgeted for.
Book a 30-minute callGermany alone shipped close to €4 billion of machinery into India in 2025, and industry forecasts point to 10 to 15 percent growth in 2026 as the new India-EU trade agreement takes hold. The demand is concentrated in power transmission, construction equipment, plastics and rubber processing machinery, material handling and logistics equipment, and food processing and packaging technology, the same sub-sectors that keep showing up as the ones India's own manufacturing base can't yet fully supply itself.
The flow back the other way is real but smaller and different in kind. India's engineering exports to Germany run close to $4.2 billion, growing at a healthy clip, but they're weighted toward components, bearings, turbines, pumps, rather than finished machinery. For most European machinery manufacturers, the corridor's real opportunity sits in selling into India, not sourcing machinery out of it.
As of 28 August 2025, foreign manufacturers exporting machinery and electrical equipment to India need BIS certification under the Machinery and Electrical Equipment Safety Omnibus Technical Regulation, and critically, that certification has to run through an Authorized India Representative, not paperwork filed from abroad. The product list is extensive and determined by customs code, so the first real step for any manufacturer is an audit of which of their specific products actually fall inside Annex 1.
European machinery already carries CE marking as standard, but CE marking is not recognised as a substitute for the new BIS requirement, the two run in parallel, and Indian customs will not accept CE marking alone for a covered product category.