India’s natural stone industry is increasingly moving beyond raw-material exports towards technology-driven, value-added manufacturing. At the forefront of this shift is Rishabh Jain, Director – International Business, Petros® Stone LLP, who has helped take the company’s precision-fabricated stone solutions to more than 50 countries. In an interaction with Machine Edge Global, Jain speaks about his journey as a second-generation entrepreneur, the growing global opportunities for Indian stone manufacturers, and why technology, skilled talent and value-added manufacturing will be critical to the industry’s next phase of growth.
You are a second-generation entrepreneur. What motivated you to take the family business forward, and what has been the biggest challenge in building your own identity within the business?
In my earlier roles across different companies, I consistently felt I had more to contribute than my position allowed. As an engineer and designer in the video game industry, for instance, I was working on a very small piece of something much larger. Becoming an artist had been a lifelong dream, but I eventually realised that what I truly wanted was to build something of my own and create a larger, more tangible impact.
My father recognised that potential in me before I did, and encouraged me to join the family business.
When I came on board, my goal was not simply to occupy a role — it was to understand the business in its entirety. I worked across sales, production, procurement, accounting, and operations to learn how each function operated, identify gaps, and find ways to improve them.
The hardest part was earning credibility. I had responsibility and authority on paper, but I was starting from the ground up and had to earn the respect of people who had been in the business longer than I had even been alive. Learning every part of the operation while simultaneously earning that trust remains one of the most formative experiences of my career.
Petros® Stone today serves customers across more than 50 countries. What have been the key factors behind this international expansion?
In today’s digital age, agility, early adoption of technology, and constant experimentation are critical to competing globally. I saw an opportunity to combine India’s exceptional natural stone resources and craftsmanship with precision manufacturing and international quality standards — a combination that wasn’t yet common among Indian exporters.
Initially, it was difficult to convince global buyers to take that first chance on us. But once they did, repeat business and referrals became our biggest drivers of growth. From Turks & Caicos and the Maldives to Germany and Japan, we gradually began selling into markets around the world — including several I never imagined would import stone from India. That experience taught me that when quality and execution are consistent, geography becomes far less of a barrier.
For context: India’s granite and worked-stone exports (HS 2515, 6802) reached roughly $1.2 billion in FY 2024–25, reaching buyers in over 100 countries — underscoring the scale of the international demand Petros Stone has tapped into.
Which international markets currently offer the biggest opportunities for Indian natural stone and engineered surfaces?
I believe the biggest opportunities lie in less-explored markets — particularly island economies such as Mauritius and the Maldives. Markets like the Seychelles are also seeing sustained investment in tourism, resorts, and luxury hospitality, which is creating strong demand for premium materials.
I would also look closely at Africa. It is set to become one of the most important long-term growth regions for construction and infrastructure over the next decade. Early entry into these markets allows Indian surface manufacturers to secure long-term client relationships well ahead of the competition.
Recent shifts in global trade policy add urgency to this diversification. The steep rise in U.S. import tariffs on stone products in 2025 — from 25% to 50% — has pushed landed costs up by an estimated 27–34%, prompting exporters to look more seriously at emerging, tariff-light markets across Africa and the Indian Ocean island states.
You have championed the shift from traditional raw-material exports towards premium finished products. Why is this transition important for India’s stone industry?
India exports close to $1.2 billion worth of finished stone products annually, while its raw material exports remain comparatively modest. China, by contrast, exports almost nothing in raw natural stone — recent industry estimates put China’s raw/crude granite exports at under $10 million a year — yet its exports of finished stone products run into the billions of dollars annually.
China imports the bulk of its raw material from countries like India and Africa, and despite not possessing comparable natural stone reserves, it has thrived by converting that raw material into finished, high-value products. The lesson is clear: India’s stone industry needs to move decisively into fabrication and premium finished products if it wants to capture a proportionate share of the value it creates.
What additional capabilities — technology, skills, and infrastructure — does India need to become a stronger exporter of finished architectural surfaces?
Technology, skills, and infrastructure all need to advance together — none of them works in isolation. You need the machinery to produce finished parts, but machinery alone isn’t enough. Without skilled labour who can operate that machinery, read architectural drawings, and produce shop drawings, even the best equipment goes underused. And without the infrastructure to support both — reliable power, logistics, and the surrounding ecosystem — neither the technology nor the people can scale.
It comes down to three things advancing in parallel: homegrown technology, a trained workforce, and the infrastructure to support both. This is a collective effort — industry, government, and training institutions all need to work together to make it possible.
How is technology changing the way natural stone is processed, fabricated, and delivered to international customers?
Technology has transformed every step of the process. Procuring raw material blocks used to be a guessing game — now we have ultrasound technology to assess block quality before cutting. Finishing slabs and delivering them to the customer used to be equally uncertain — now every slab can be scanned and photographed before it ships, giving customers full visibility.
Where you once needed to work only with very high-quality blocks, resin impregnation and vacuum bagging technologies now let manufacturers work with a much wider range of material without compromising on strength or finish. And where marketing once meant sending employees door-to-door to warehouses, digital marketing and AI-driven tools now let us reach buyers directly, anywhere in the world. Nearly every part of the value chain has been reshaped by technology in its own way.
What role do precision fabrication and project-specific solutions play in differentiating Petros Stone from conventional stone exporters?
What sets us apart is that we have refined the entire pipeline — the process, the talent, and the technology — to take a project from a single architectural drawing or blueprint to a fully executed, finished product. That includes:
● Sourcing the raw material
● Ensuring consistency across every block and slab
● Finishing and fabricating with extreme precision
● Producing detailed shop drawings
● Delivering those shop drawings to the client
● Packaging in custom-built wooden crates designed for safe transit
● Labelling and packaging every piece for straightforward, error-free installation
Every stage, from start to finish, is optimised to save the customer significant time and effort — to the point where it simply doesn’t make sense for them to go elsewhere and experiment with an unproven supplier.
With India increasingly focusing on self-reliance and manufacturing, where do you see the biggest opportunities for companies such as Petros Stone?
The biggest opportunities, in my view, are in international luxury projects.
We are performing well, and with strong manufacturing expertise, our materials are well-positioned in international markets where quality is highly valued. I believe the greatest opportunities lie in new and growing resort properties, luxury hospitality, and high-end residential developments. Populations in these destinations are growing and getting wealthier, and demand for high-quality materials continues to rise in step.
In the medium and affordable housing segment, alternative materials are likely to take share from natural stone — a shift we’ve already seen play out in the U.S. market, where engineered and composite surfaces have displaced stone in cost-sensitive segments.
International projects differ from domestic ones in that they place far greater emphasis on quality, precision, technology, and installation efficiency, and typically operate with higher budgets. In India, we still rely heavily on on-site fabrication, where installation time, precision, and quality often receive less attention — and where luxury materials are used far less extensively than abroad.