New Delhi: Can India emerge as a long-term alternative to Chinese dominance in shipbuilding? What would creating that capacity require? ThePrint spoke to Pierroberto Folgiero, CEO and MD of Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri, on India’s prospects for sustained investment in engineering, supply chains and industrial know-how, especially as India-Italy maritime capacity-building cooperation has grown.
Folgiero’s assessment comes at a time when shipbuilding has returned to the centre of strategic competition. The United States is trying to revive its maritime industrial base, Europe is reassessing a capability neglected for decades, and India wants larger naval and commercial fleets alongside the domestic capacity to design, build and maintain them.
From New Delhi’s perspective, China’s unprecedented shipbuilding modernisation is also a factor propelling faster decisions on this front.
“This is the era of shipbuilding,” Folgiero said.
India matters, he argued, both because it must strengthen its fleets on the eastern and western seaboards and because its industrial rise can connect the Indo-Pacific more closely with the Mediterranean. For Italy and Europe, that makes India more than a market: it is a prospective maritime and manufacturing partner.
The conversation took place amid a wider expansion of India-Italy defence ties. The two governments exchanged a bilateral military cooperation plan for 2026-27 in April.
Fincantieri has worked with Indian shipbuilders for about 15 years, including on complex propulsion components, while its subsidiary WASS has secured an order exceeding €200 million for Black Shark Advanced torpedoes for the Indian Navy’s six Scorpène-class submarines.
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From local production to Indian engineering
Folgiero said the next phase must move beyond conventional localisation of certain equipment.
Fincantieri’s engagement began with Indian shipyards and later expanded to manufacturers of propellers, transmission systems, engines and other elements of the engine room.
The company is now developing an engineering hub intended to bring Indian specialists into conceptual and functional design much earlier in a project.
That shift is important to support India’s effort to move from licensed production towards indigenous design and co-development.
According to Folgiero, the engineering hub should not be seen as an isolated office but the next stage of a relationship in which Indian teams gain greater technical and manufacturing autonomy. He said India has both the engineering talent and the ability to work across different industrial cultures to make this practical.
The opportunity, however, comes with complexity. India is not a “plug and play” market, he cautioned. Its scale produces a large field of shipyards, suppliers, authorities and other stakeholders.
International companies must understand not only personal relationships which remain important, but also how contracts are written, administered and aligned with the requirements of different public authorities and the Indian bureaucracy. Underestimating this at the beginning, he said, allows problems to accumulate.
Ships are becoming platforms for systems above and below water
The technological change described by Folgiero extends well beyond the hull.
He identified three simultaneous transformations: the expansion of maritime operations from the surface to the seabed; the digitisation of the ship’s “brain”; and the redesign of its “heart”, or engine room, for the energy transition.
A warship is increasingly a “mother ship,” able to deploy uncrewed systems on the surface, underwater, and near the seabed. Coordinating them requires underwater communications, new electronics and sophisticated command-and-control systems.
At the same time, data and artificial intelligence are changing how ships sense, decide and operate, while propulsion is being reshaped by decarbonisation and a renewed debate over deployment of nuclear power at sea.
Folgiero sees room for India-Fincantieri cooperation across all three areas.
India’s digital capabilities can support the transition towards software-intensive vessels; its planned fleet expansion creates industrial scale; and its dependence on undersea cables, ports and energy infrastructure gives it a direct interest in systems that can monitor and protect the underwater domain. Maritime security, in this view, can no longer be delivered by combat ships alone.
A long-term industrial bet, not a fast-track promise
Fincantieri’s present Indian footprint is built around relationships with shipyards, including Cochin Shipyard and Hindustan Shipyard.
Folgiero said the company is examining how to deepen these ties and where additional partnerships could make sense. But he resisted the idea that shipbuilding capacity can be created quickly through declarations and official announcements alone.
Shipbuilding remains a heavy, blue-collar industry backed by intensive engineering. Expertise accumulates over time, including through learning from past mistakes. Fincantieri’s regional operations in the United States, Vietnam, Romania and Norway were built as enduring industrial engagement and not short projects.
“Technology and know-how transfer must be there to stay,” he said.
That approach reflects what Folgiero called an era of “decentralised powerhouses”. Shipbuilding will no longer be concentrated in one centre, but neither will every country be able to create a competitive ecosystem.
India’s combination of demand, engineering depth and geopolitical weight places it among the countries capable of doing so—if policy continuity and industrial patience match the ambition.
IMEC and the return of geopolitics to business
The proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor forms part of this larger maritime calculus. Folgiero described IMEC as valuable because it pushes Europe to rethink its connection with India as a major manufacturing power.
The immediate constraint is conflicts across West Asia: any land bridge between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean must pass through a region that may not presently be able to undertake such a transformation.
The uncertainty, he suggested, concerns timing more than the direction of change. Europe is reconsidering its production model, access to raw materials and demographic future, while its relationships with China, the United States and the Middle East are being recast.
Italy, as a trading and maritime economy, has a particular stake in an Indo-Mediterranean connection in which India plays a larger role.
That also means commercial decisions can no longer be separated from strategy. “The globalisation we knew is over,” Folgiero said.
Supply chains in defence and energy will shorten as geopolitical blocs invest in their own capabilities. Price and quality will still matter, but shipbuilders will have to understand the political setting of major contracts, while governments will play a larger role in shaping them.
Fincantieri straddles those two worlds: it has public ownership and is also listed on the Milan stock exchange. For Folgiero, that combination brings an understanding of Italy’s strategic system and the commercial discipline of a listed company.
Its India proposition rests on the same dual logic—industrial opportunity, but within a geopolitical partnership intended to last well beyond a single ship or contract.
Italy and India look forward to a long-term engagement for deals that will develop into co-production and co-stakes. In Folgiero’s opinion, Fincantieri, with a long-standing relationship with Indian shipyards, is ideally positioned to take that relationship further.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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Mr Pierroberto Folgiero is unaware of our lack of expertise in street infrastructure. Hence, he is falling for our shipbuilding.