By: Pavan Puri, Founder & Managing Director, Greencore Electronics
There was a time, not very long ago, when customising a car in India was a modest affair. A set of seat covers, an aftermarket speaker, perhaps a steering wheel wrap for the enthusiast. That version of the market still exists in corners, but it is peripheral to what is actually happening now. Across factory floors, dealership networks, and aftermarket workshops from the industrial belts of Haryana to the port cities of the south, something more fundamental is taking shape. The Indian car is no longer just a vehicle. It is becoming a system.
The numbers give this weight. According to IMARC Group, India’s car accessories market was valued at USD 2,323 million in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 3,754 million by 2034 at a CAGR of 5.28%. Follow the electronics thread, and the picture sharpens. Automotive electronics are forecast to reach USD 18.6 billion by 2033, and the connected car segment is expanding at a CAGR of 24.28% through 2031. These are not optimistic projections. They reflect an accelerating shift in what Indian consumers expect their vehicles to do.
India is now the world’s third-largest automotive market, and that position carries with it a new depth of demand. Safety alerts, in-cabin connectivity, voice controls, and seamless device integration have moved from aspirational to assumed. The industry is working hard to keep pace.
The Connected Cabin: Where Infotainment Meets Expectation
Infotainment comes up early in any mid-segment car conversation today, and that is not a coincidence. Interior accessories now command 65% of India’s car accessories market, and connectivity is the engine behind that dominance. What changed is not only the technology but also the consumer. India has tens of millions of smartphone users who expect their car to be as responsive as their phone. That expectation gap, between factory fitment and what the user actually wants, is where a great deal of the industry’s energy currently sits.
India’s automotive infotainment segment stood at USD 665 million in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 1,850 million by 2034 at a CAGR of 11.67%. AI-enabled dashcams, wireless charging, GPS-integrated displays, and Bluetooth audio have become table stakes across the mid-range. Leading automotive groups have more than doubled their connected feature sets in five years, showing how quickly consumer appetite accelerates once activated.
The aftermarket is where the industry operates at real scale. Accounting for 70% of the car accessories channel in India today, it is where millions of existing vehicle owners retrofit the connectivity their original purchase did not include. Reverse camera kits, parking sensors, multi-port fast chargers, and infotainment upgrades are practical decisions made by well-researched buyers comparing specifications online. The segment is professionalising, and organised distribution investment is following.
Safety, ADAS, and the Regulatory Tailwind Reshaping Supply Chains
Regulation is reshaping the safety electronics segment in ways the market did not fully anticipate three years ago. The ADAS market in India stood at approximately USD 2.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach USD 8.4 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 16.4%. The Bharat NCAP 2.0 framework has shifted the calculus for vehicle manufacturers. Features that lived only in imported luxury vehicles a few years back, collision warning, automatic emergency braking, and blind spot monitoring, are now central to the compliance conversation across a much wider price band. That is the direct consequence of a rating framework consumers are actively using when making purchase decisions.
For domestic manufacturers building the hardware beneath these systems, sensor enclosures, wiring infrastructure, reverse camera assemblies, and parking electronics, this represents structural demand. Global electronics firms have deepened partnerships with Indian research institutions to localise component development, and Tier-1 suppliers are scaling capacity inside the country. Every EV adds further weight to that signal. India’s EV market is growing at a projected CAGR of 19% through 2032, and each electric vehicle carries a substantially heavier electronic load than its petrol counterpart. The Production Linked Incentive scheme is pulling investment into domestic manufacturing of these components that would otherwise have stayed offshore.
Where Investors Are Positioning and What the Market Must Still Fix
The aftermarket investment story has genuine momentum. India’s automotive aftermarket is projected to grow from USD 11.84 billion in 2025 to USD 19.26 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 7.2%. Major distribution players launched rapid-fulfilment platforms in 2024 targeting hundreds of dark stores nationwide. Global automotive service groups are professionalising independent workshop networks. These moves reflect a clear-eyed recognition that the aftermarket is a primary growth engine, especially as vehicle ownership expands into tier-2 and tier-3 cities where organised retail is still developing.
North India holds 28.5% of the national car accessories market, anchored by the vehicle density of the Delhi-NCR corridor. The faster-growing story is in smaller cities, where rising incomes and smartphone-led commerce are producing first-time buyers with the same product expectations as their metro counterparts.
Quality remains the industry’s unresolved tension. Counterfeit and substandard products persist in the unorganised segment, and the damage runs deeper than individual returns. A buyer who installs a cheap reverse camera that fails in three months does not come away thinking about market fragmentation. They come away distrusting the category. Manufacturers holding IATF 16949 and ISO 9001 certifications are separating themselves in that environment, not as a branding exercise but as a verifiable quality signal that OEM procurement teams and retail consumers now actively look for.
The shift underway in Indian automotive electronics has the shape of a step change, already visible on the roads, in the workshops, and in the investment decisions of those watching this space. The vehicle as a passive transport appliance is giving way to something more intelligent, more connected, and more demanding of the components that power it. For manufacturers, aftermarket players, and investors prepared to meet that standard, the runway is long.