A precision forging line at an Indian engineering exporter.
Photo · Illustration: Business Index
India's engineering exports hit a record $116.7bn — led by the mid-caps
The headline export number is the highest ever. The more interesting story is who is driving it: capital-goods and component firms that most investors have never owned.
India exported $116.7 billion of engineering goods in FY2024-25, the highest figure on record and past the previous $112.1 billion peak set in FY22 (Source: EEPC India / IBEF, July 2025). That single line will get quoted in ministerial speeches. It also flatters a sector that spent three years going nowhere in aggregate — and hides the firms that are actually growing.
Look at the path, not the peak. Engineering exports fell to $107.1 billion in FY23, crawled to $109.3 billion in FY24 on 2.1% growth, then jumped 6.7% in FY25 (Source: EEPC India, 2025). A sector that is roughly 3% of GDP and about 40% of India's manufacturing exports (Source: IBEF, 2025) does not swing that much unless something inside the mix is changing faster than the average.
The average hides the movers
The mid-cap capital-goods names are where the compounding is. Bharat Forge grew consolidated exports 24.3% year on year in FY24, to roughly ₹1.18 lakh crore on the consolidated topline, with defence export orders singled out as a "key driver" (Source: Bharat Forge Integrated Annual Report 2023-24). Consolidated EBITDA rose 28% to ₹2,469 crore in the same year (Source: Bharat Forge Q4 FY24 analyst update). This is not a commodity exporter riding a price cycle; it is a components maker moving up the value chain into defence and aerospace.
AIA Engineering tells the same story from a different corner. The Ahmedabad grinding-media maker books more than 70% of revenue from exports, shipping high-chrome consumables to mining and cement majors across 70-plus countries (Source: AIA Engineering Annual Report 2023-24). It is dull, specialised, and almost entirely dependent on customers outside India — which is exactly the profile the record number is built on.
The record headline belongs to the sector. The growth belongs to a handful of specialists most portfolios have never held.
Why now
Three forces are stacked in the mid-caps' favour. Global buyers de-risking away from a single-country supply chain are qualifying Indian vendors they ignored for a decade. Defence indigenisation has turned forging and machining capacity into an order book rather than a cost centre. And a weaker rupee quietly widens margins on dollar contracts without the firm doing anything differently.
None of that shows up in the aggregate, because the aggregate is dragged by lumpier, lower-margin categories. The $116.7 billion is real. So is the fact that most of the incremental growth sits in companies that a generalist investor would struggle to name.
The catch
Concentration cuts both ways. A firm earning 70% of revenue abroad imports every wobble in its customers' capex plans. US tariff noise, European industrial weakness, and freight shocks all land directly on the P&L. The mid-cap engineering exporter is a leveraged bet on the world's factories staying busy — which is precisely why the record number is worth reading past the headline.
The export machine did not double in eighteen months. It did something quieter and more durable: it changed who was pulling.
Sources
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