India is a continent... states compete like countries, says Nivruti Rai

INVEST INDIA, the national agency for investment promotion and facilitation under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, has set an annual target of $110 billion in FDI inflows by 2030. Nivruti Rai, the not-for-profit company’s MD and CEO, says this goal is highly attainable. In an interview with Fortune India, she emphasises that India has transitioned from being viewed as a global alternative to becoming a top choice for investments. Edited excerpts: How has your transition been from the private sector, at Intel Inc., to Invest India? When I joined, Union minister Piyush Goyal asked me to run Invest India the way I had run Intel India (as its country head). “Our budget is limited, it’s taxpayers’ money, you need to spend judiciously,” he had said. My reply was, “That’s what we did at Intel India, too… we were also not so deep-pocketed”. I was explicitly told: “Don’t market India. India is already marketed. Bring the investment, and then hold the investor’s hand so they get the best RoI”. The difference is that at Intel India, my decisions were my own. Here, decisions are democratic, and everything must be documented. Even the right thing can be questioned… that was a learning. The big difference is every win here is for the country. FY26 was spectacular because we enabled $6 billion-plus of the $25 billion in industry investments into the country. Did you have to reshape Invest India? I made a lot of changes. A new organisational structure is in place. I have brought in people to contribute to my vision. We have full-fledged country teams and sector-specific teams in place. And we do tonnes of research work... Recently, we started providing a preliminary feasibility study. Once it is done, we will pass you on to specialists who go deeper. We will hand-hold you until you make an investment offer. Last fiscal, 60 companies invested $6 billion in total. Our database has a $40-billion investment [commitment]. We have chased investments in 3,000 different areas. I have identified 11 focus countries from which 65% of the world’s FDI comes. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get investments from other countries. Similarly, we have identified nine sectors. But in reality, each sector is a plethora of sectors. We have a separate team to drive that. Then there is a team that supports all state teams. On one side, there are promised investments, and on the other, rise in foreign currency outflows. How do you see it? In unlisted companies, two types of investments happen. One, the industry comes, invests, and sets itself up. Second, institutional investors who invest in unlisted companies. Most of that is private equity, and some sovereign funds. In FY25, we got around $80 billion. Of this, $30 billion was reinvestment. The remaining $50 billion is new investment, of which 60%, or $30 billion, was from institutional investors. Our data indicates that in FY26, we must have received $90 billion in such investments, a $10 billion increase. On the other hand, there is about $60 billion that got disinvested or repatriated. Another $30 billion is outbound FDI, which is investment made by Indian companies outside. However, this $60 billion was invested here for at least 10 years [before it was taken out]. And PE/VCs have a $3 trillion backlog that they have not sold yet. Capital recycling (exits and re-entries through deep IPO, PE, and institutional markets) is not capital flight. It’s what happens when a market matures enough to give investors their exit. If the FDI inflow was $17 billion five years ago, it was $30 billion in 2025. Outward FDI was $11 billion then, it is $30 billion now, almost three times. It means, we have problems of a matured country where our companies are investing abroad. They are acquiring new molecules, they get new markets. The net FDI outflow is a 10-year-old story. If six years ago, a company invested $6 billion in India and they have repatriated $6 billion, with another $6 billion still in India, [it is a growth story]. My team has to study what types of investments are coming in to each sector... In India, the market is hopeful. The increase in reinvestment means companies continue to trust us. PE/VCs believe their money will grow [in India]. So, don’t compare investments with previous years. Each decade is a different story; gross matters more than net today. How realistic is your hope to attract $30 billion from four sectors in three years and the $110 billion average annual investment target by 2030? Invest India’s metric is not investor intent but it is steel in the ground; $10.5 billion grounded over FY23-26, with $6.1 billion in FY26 alone. We are working towards attracting $30 billion over three years from just four sectors — memory fab, pharma, aerospace & defence, and shipbuilding. The AI-fuelled data centre demand should see memory fab sector attracting $10 billion as investments. Patent cliff could drive $10 billion investment in the pharma sector. Aerospace and defence, and shipbuilding and infrastructure could add another $10 billion. The projection for 2030 is based on velocity. We have analysed FDI trends for the past 21 years. In the first seven years, $30 billion was the annual average FDI inflow. In the next seven, it was $40 billion, and the last seven, $70 billion. Velocity-wise, it will be $100 billion per annum for the next seven years, but our target is $110 billion. This year, it has touched $80 billion, so it is on track. Under the India-EFTA Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement, the four member states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) have collectively committed $100 billion in FDI over 15 years. Is this happening? We have signed an MoU with Innovation Norway, with a focus on shipbuilding and funds. Shipbuilding is one of the four big bets we have made [in the $30 billion plan]. My biggest partner will be Norway. Because our vessels are handling only 7% of the trade, of which 93% is enabled through foreign vessels. We are spending $75 billion only on foreign vessels. I was excited to hear Bharat Forge getting into shipbuilding. I need to do more such matchmaking. What’s your view on FDI concentration in certain states and regions? Yes, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, etc., have attracted more investments. Wherever there is an industrial ecosystem, that’s where you invest. But we got an investment in Nagaland also. I am really trying to push the Ministry of Commerce to see investments in data centres happen in the most difficult areas (investment ecosystems)...[because] there won’t be an issue with cooling. How are you promoting FDI across India? We have taken the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s data from the annual survey of industries. Here we have a database of 200,000 companies. These are small, medium, and large companies, not micro-enterprises. Our team plotted these companies based on what they manufacture. When an investor comes, this is what we will showcase. For investors, India is a continent where states are competing the way countries do. We have created a platform to map the ecosystem of companies across sectors. The next step is to match investor needs to a state’s strengths in land, supply chain, market, talent, incentives, etc. We also promote newer geographies. On the domestic side, the leading recipients are MP, AP, Rajasthan, and Odisha and not the traditional ones. We have plotted the top three sectors of each state. Then we have done global benchmarking for those states and seen how they stand as compared to global competitiveness. When I show this, somebody investing in Odisha can say “let’s take the benefit of neighbouring West Bengal, too”. How are you different from state investment promotion agencies? A lot of investment promotion agencies are public sector. They know a lot about policies, but our strengths are different. Me working in partnership with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is formidable. We have started plotting states and cities based on GSDP per capita income. So, if there are five top states, five or six cities in those states are driving this growth. We have initiated the Vision Day concept in these states [for their aspirational sectors]... The purpose is to explain what we should do if an investor has to go to a particular city. If there is a lack of infrastructure, we ask them to build good roads. The purpose of the Vision Day is to increase the percentage of manufacturing in GSDP from 8% to 15%. How to bring in more industries in priority sectors, how to develop other sectors, etc. We have worked with Madhya Pradesh; we have plans for Telangana, UP, and Punjab. We plan to identify other cities where we want to bring FDI. We want money to come into those sectors, jobs created, but also incentives and benefits for the investor. We have to do things to make our other cities investment-friendly. How are the states responding? DPIIT has been ranking states, NITI Aayog has been doing its own studies, advising and consulting states... They are excited to partner with us. The difference is you can offer consultancy and advice, get your hands dirty, and go ahead and do it. We do it for them. People say this does not look like a government organisation. It is not meant to be. Is Invest India only useful for billion-dollar entrants? Where do mid-size firms fit? We offer the same lifecycle support to all firms — no minimum investment threshold. What we offer is a “scale-up” India programme for domestic SMEs to partner with big foreign players and a cohort programme for foreign SMEs to enter India. The support stack includes technology licensing, JV facilitation, and private capital infusion. Have Invest India’s suggestions resulted in policy changes? We see friction at a factory gate before anyone in Delhi does. That is the information edge. Once there is a pattern, the same friction is experienced across investors. This becomes policy input. We don’t draft. We don’t lobby. We surface operational reality and let policymakers decide. That separation is what gives the feedback its credibility.

India is a continent... states compete like countries, says Nivruti Rai

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