‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’: FICCI president's China message

India should engage with China rather than avoid it if it wants to strengthen its manufacturing capabilities, accelerate innovation and become more deeply integrated into global supply chains, RPG Group Vice Chairman and Ficci President Anant Goenka said after leading a Ficci delegation of CEOs on a five-day tour of China. India should go beyond buying from China and become a supplier to Chinese companies as they expand in India and global markets.

Indian companies need to source smarter from China and explore joint ventures selectively, Goenka said in a presentation on learnings from the tour to China. “Engage with China, not avoid it. If you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” Goenka said, stressing that Indian companies should look beyond viewing China solely as a competitor.

India’s basket of imports from China needs to change. Instead of importing just commodity and intermediate inputs, Indian companies should source machinery and automation solutions that offer a clear cost and speed advantage from China. He added that industry should enter partnerships that involve explicit technology transfer to Indian companies even as the country was seeking to strengthen domestic capabilities.

Sharpen ambitions

The Ficci delegation’s five-day tour included meetings with leading Chinese companies across sectors such as electric vehicles, robotics, healthcare technology and digital platforms. The delegation also got first-hand exposure to the scale of China's investment in innovation, automation and integrated industrial ecosystems.

“Winning in the next decade will require Indian industry to sharpen its ambitions, tighten execution and achieve much deeper integration across products, supply chains and technology,” he said.

Goenka argued that India needs to move beyond incremental R&D to integrated innovation. Indian companies must commit capital, leadership attention and organisational bandwidth to long-term innovation. Innovation should not be treated as a standalone R&D function but should be embedded across business models, talent systems and corporate culture, he added. He also called for stronger ecosystem partnerships involving industry, technology firms, manufacturers and research institutions to accelerate innovation and improve competitiveness.

Another key lesson from China was the transformative role of automation and digital integration. Indian manufacturers should skip legacy stages of industrial development and invest directly in digitally integrated, low-touch manufacturing systems. “Deep end-to-end integration across suppliers and customers can dramatically reduce development and delivery timelines,” he said.

Move beyond isolated incentive schemes

His message to policymakers was that India needed to shift from isolated incentive schemes to building interconnected local ecosystems where industrial excellence is supported by decentralised execution and aligning bureaucratic incentives. He said there was a need to align research in government institutes to priority sectors and foster deep industry linkages to rapidly scale innovation and develop talent in AI, automation, renewable energy, biotech and advanced materials.

Other recommendations include creating a high-level coordinating body to align industrial policies across ministries, strengthening industry-academia collaboration, empowering city and district administrations to compete for investment, and improving bureaucratic accountability.