Mr. Vyom Agarwal, President, ACE-Action Construction Equipment
“For the construction equipment sector, 2025 unfolded as a year of tempered business activity. Extended rains across several regions, combined with the industry’s shift to Stage V emission norms, slowed equipment deployment and stretched out customer decision cycles. Early-year pre-buying and a cautious pace of adopting newer technologies added to the moderated market rhythm, while global volatility and higher cost of equipment influenced customer’s decisions across the value chain.
Yet, at ACE, we see 2026 signal a broad revival in demand through growing traction in private capex, export-led opportunities, expansion in defence applications and public expenditure flowing into airports, railways and freight corridors. Additionally, policy impetus, GST reforms, softer interest-rate conditions and an improved liquidity environment will play an important role in supporting demand and strengthening industry confidence. As infrastructure programmes scale up, we expect stronger visibility across our equipment categories. The coming year will also mark a deeper move towards digital ecosystems, with remote diagnostics, predictive analytics and telematics enhancing utilisation and lifecycle management.
To strengthen this momentum, we encourage the government to consider imposition of safeguard or anti-dumping duties on Chinese crawler excavators and tower cranes to ensure a fair and level playing field for domestic manufacturers. These interventions will be pivotal in boosting competitiveness and positioning the CE industry as a core enabler of India’s infrastructure aspirations in 2026 and beyond.”
Mr. Nagendra Nath Sinha, MD, Rodic Digital & Advisory
The year 2025 has been a truly transformative chapter in India’s infrastructure-led growth story. A strong demand surge driven by accelerated road building, renewed momentum across rail, metro and industrial corridors and the government’s continued thrust on modernizing national infrastructure and strong fiscal support has reaffirmed how rapidly the sector is scaling. As of March 2025, India’s road network has crossed 63 lakh kilometers, making it the second largest in the world. At the same time, digital maps and spatial intelligence are reshaping how highways are envisioned, designed, executed, operated and maintained. This shift has been fueled by the powerful integration of GIS technologies with the PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan and enabling access thereto to the private sector, enabling faster, data-led and future-ready infrastructure development. The 2025 infrastructure strategy emphasises renewable energy, efficient utilities and sustainable infrastructure acknowledging environmental and growth imperatives. Urban development projects, including smart-city initiatives, metro expansions, modern utilities and housing, are scaling up pushing India toward more sustainable, planned urbanisation. Governments and private promoters are increasingly taking up complex “mega-projects” across transport, urban infrastructure, energy, ports as they seek to improve connectivity, economic gains and productivity and sustainability. 2025 seems to reflect a broader shift towards updating outdated laws, providing clarity, enabling private investment and integrating sustainability / modern technology making infrastructure regulation more agile, investor-friendly and future-ready, esp. in ports, energy storage, telecom sectors.
We strongly believe that the Indian infrastructure and engineering consultancies like us, strengthened by digital transformation, are now competing confidently on global platforms. However, 2025 also brought its share of challenges like dampened highway construction pace and approvals, skill shortages in a rapidly digitizing era, global supply-chain disruptions and raw material price inflation that made delivery on ambitious export and domestic commitments more complex, while industry continues to suffer from cost and time overruns due to time consuming land acquisition, environmental clearance and regulatory approvals; limited access to structured long term financing, shortage of skilled labour and limited adoption of modern construction technologies and governance, coordination and accountability constraints.
As we look ahead to 2026, we believe India is entering a decisive phase where ambition, sustainability and integration must converge. We urge the government to deepen digital skilling, streamline approval cycles, strengthen supply chain buffers, improve availability of long term financing and continue incentivizing technology-led project execution. We also urge the governments across the spectrum to continue fiscal support, streamlining policy and regulation, providing visibility across sectors for projects as it has done through National Infrastructure Pipeline, provide impetus for monetization of assets and creating a more dynamic market for PPP assets, laying out roadmap and policy/fiscal support for new infrastructure classes viz. energy storage systems (both BESS and PSP), slurry pipelines, data centers, green energy and energy transition and urban infrastructure. These actions will be crucial for sustaining momentum and shaping the next decade of infrastructure evolution.”
Mr. Mohit Jandu, MD, J Infratech
“The past year has been a mix of steady advancement and evolving priorities for India’s highway sector. While certain project bids saw rescheduling due to state-level clearance delays, the broader development momentum remained intact. The government’s renewed push to attract private participation, supported by the approval of high-speed corridor packages spanning nearly 930 km and backed by over ₹ 50,655 crore, has set a strong foundation for the years ahead. This aligns with India’s ambitious roadmap to expand its high-speed road network, with an investment outlay of nearly ₹11 lakh crore aimed at modernising infrastructure and reducing logistics costs.
The integration of GIS-led planning, intelligent traffic systems, digital tolling and citizen-facing mobility platforms is transforming highways into responsive, data-enabled assets. In 2026, technologies, sustainability-focused methods and corridor-led approaches are poised to remain areas of sectoral focus.”
Mr. Khursheed Alam, Founder, Atmos Systems
“For Atmos Systems, 2025 has been a pivotal year marked by a strong rise in logistics and warehousing activity across India. The surge in e-commerce fulfilment, rapid retail expansion and growing 3PL operations significantly increased demand for advanced material handling systems. We saw heightened interest in high-throughput conveyor lines, automated storage solutions, electric forklifts and intelligent sorting systems, as customers sought greater efficiency, safety and predictability in their operations.
While this growth has been encouraging, it has also brought its share of challenges. High capital costs for automation, skill shortages in robotics and digital systems and integration barriers, continue to create friction. However, these hurdles are gradually being addressed through innovative financing models, focused skilling efforts and the rapid maturation of interoperable technologies. For us, this meant investing more in training programmes, offering modular system designs and working closely with customers to streamline digital integration without disrupting ongoing operations.
As we look ahead to 2026, the trajectory is clear – sustainability, autonomy and intelligence will define the next era of material handling. Electric forklifts, powered by lithium-ion technology, are steadily becoming the default choice as companies transition toward greener, low-maintenance fleets. At the same time, AI-enabled equipment, IoT-driven diagnostics and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are moving from pilot projects to mainstream adoption, driven by the need for resilience and real-time decisioning.
At Atmos Systems, our focus for 2026 is to deepen our portfolio in sustainable, digitally intelligent material movement solutions, ensuring Indian warehouses are equipped for a more competitive and future-ready manufacturing landscape.”
