# India could combine innovation with mass manufacturing Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/india-could-combine-innovation-with-mass-manufacturing/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Naman Pushp](https://realalpha.app/people/naman-pushp/) · Naman Pushp is founder and CEO of Airbound. - Host: [Ashlee Vance](https://realalpha.app/people/ashlee-vance/) · CEO, Core Memory · Wrote the best-selling biography Elon Musk; covered tech for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist and The New York Times. - Show: Core Memory - Episode: [He's Taking On Amazon With A New Kind Of Aircraft](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/), Nov 4, 2026 - Moment: 1:07:45 to 1:13:16 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/india-could-combine-innovation-with-mass-manufacturing/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4065 ## Quote > “I think I see US as like the innovation hub and China as the manufacturing hub. And like India can be that **melding of the two**” > — [Naman Pushp](https://realalpha.app/people/naman-pushp/) at [1:12:20](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4340) · Core Memory ## Takeaways 1. He says India can leapfrog rather than copy China's sequence. 2. He points to China's progression from cars to high-performance EVs. 3. He sees India pairing innovation with manufacturing capability. ## About this segment Naman Pushp contrasts China's incremental industrial path with India's potential to leapfrog into ambitious hardware. He sees India combining innovation with a strong manufacturing workforce. From “He's Taking On Amazon With A New Kind Of Aircraft”, Nov 4, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/) ## Transcript From the transcript Core Memory publishes with the episode. [1:07:51](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4071) United States, multi-decade track record of doing interesting things in technology. China, last 20, 30 years, clearly became the world's manufacturing powerhouse and then now is also pushing the edge of innovation on all sorts of France, India has a, it's got a manufacturing base. It does a lot of stuff internally, you know, has these capabilities. It has nuclear energy, has a space program, very like massive, big things. [1:08:25](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4105) Obviously, tremendous education system and talent and all that. So, you know, if you have, I'm trying to think of like countries of size that, Would be substantial players in the tech and manufacturing field moving forward. And all three of those really jump out at me. And I see Europe as kind of like a dying. I love Europe, but I don't think it's going to be in this discussion. So yeah, like fast forward. [1:09:01](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4141) Whatever, however many years you want, 10, 15, 20. What's like the most optimistic case for India in this spectrum between making stuff and innovating and, you know, is it, does it have its own totally unique niche compared to China in the United States? Or it's like, it's decided, yeah, we're going to take China on in manufacturing and we're going to innovate over here or... I think India does build out. [1:09:31](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4171) It's a very broad question. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know why you think I'm qualified to answer these questions, but I will do my best at answering them. I think India does have its own niche. I think it looks very similar to China on the surface, but I think India's superpower is like the idea of leapfrogging. I think that's a very unique Indian concept, right? Like India never had landline. [1:09:58](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4198) We skipped straight to mobile. The interesting thing in India is that like, Most people have phones, but most people don't have Wi-Fi because it's just like 5G is so good. We have unlimited data plans. Why even have Wi-Fi in your home? Which is, again, a concept that you wouldn't really imagine here in the US, but it's really because Wi-Fi came first. If data came first, a lot of people wouldn't have Wi-Fi. [1:10:22](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4222) So that's there. I sort of... Yeah, and maybe I'm personifying countries too much, but I sort of see China as this really sensible country, which is like, okay, first I will do A, then I will do B, then I will do C, right? Like this idea of we will first be the low-cost manufacturing hub of the world, then we will sort of scale this to getting into higher tech manufacturing, and then we will eventually use this base of difficult technologies we're able to build and incrementally innovate on them to make them even better, right? [1:10:53](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4253) Kind of like how... China got good at cars, then China got good at EVs, and now not only are the cheapest EVs made in China, but also the highest performance EVs are made in China. It blew my mind that the fastest car in the world is an electric Chinese car. They didn't just beat the record for the fastest electric car, they just beat the record for the fastest car. So that's insane. But at the end of the day, like it is just incremental in nature. [1:11:22](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4282) I think when China tries to do like massive leaps, it doesn't tend to work out the best. I think like the best example of this is, I mean, COMAC is generally considered to be a broad like failure of China. It's, you know, their attempt to like fight against Airbus and Boeing and build a third major aviation player. And it's just, and there's a reason why most people have not heard of COMAC. I think India is much better at this. [1:11:47](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4307) And so I think if we're able to get our talent in order, if we're able to build a powerful ecosystem that is able to get capital into it, able to get talent into it and able to get the right founders, then I do think that India's like really uniquely positioned for these hardware moonshot opportunities, where it is tech that is just so, so meaningfully different that I don't think China's sensible approach will work. [1:12:12](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4332) And it's also tech that just requires the sheer amount of skill and proficiency in the trades that I don't think the US has the kind of labor base to match what can be done in India. And so India gets this Kind of like, you know, I think I see US as like the innovation hub and China as the manufacturing hub. And like India can be that melding of the two, where if you need to do innovative things that are like at their core, great mass manufactured products, I think India is the right place to do that. [1:12:44](https://realalpha.app/v/vACBrKGKdH4/?t=4364) It feels actually shockingly similar to industrialist US in the early 1900s, where you had this powerful industrial base that was powering the development of the economy, combined with these highly ambitious individuals that wanted to do crazy things and really reshape the way people live. I think those combinations exist in India, and I think in the next few decades, we can genuinely see that kind of economic boom come out of the country.