In the infernal heat and noise of its plant in Pune, Bharat Forge is hammering out a key component of India’s industrial future. The country’s largest producer of axles, crankshafts and other forged auto parts – also the world’s second largest, after Germany’s Thyssen – supplies about 35 vehicle manufacturers, from BMW and Volkswagen to General Motors. A shipment of crankshafts destined for Iveco, Fiat’s truckmaking arm, sits on the factory floor ready to be shipped to its customers. At first glance, Bharat Forge looks like just another cog in the global automotive supply chain, doing the kind of dirty, clanking, labour-intensive grunt work carmakers would naturally outsource to a low-cost centre like India.

Even a perfunctory closer look, however, reveals a subtler reality. The plant is highly automated, with manual labour limited to a few functions.One-fifth of the people Bharat Forge employs globally are engineers, and like its peers in information technology, it uses cheap local talent to its advantage. “We were one of the first companies in India to emphasise a white-collar manufacturing concept,” says Amit Kalyani, the family-founded concern’s executive director. “The emphasis is on deploying technology, not manual labour.”