Dozens of Indian companies have already expressed interest in joining Romania’s green transformation, especially in renewable energy and related infrastructure. Many more are exploring opportunities in sectors ranging from agriculture and manufacturing to defense and digital industries. Romania is no longer seen by Indian investors as just another destination on the European map, but increasingly as a gateway, a production base and a strategic bridge into the wider European Union, H.E. Dr. Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, Ambassador of India to Romania, told Energynomics.
That growing interest is clearly encouraged by the newly concluded EU-India Free Trade Agreement, which promises massive tariff cuts, easier customs procedures and stronger legal predictability. But in the ambassador’s view, the case for closer cooperation rests on something deeper as well: the political and institutional affinity between India and Europe.
Like-minded countries
This is the starting point of Ambassador Mohapatra’s argument about the growing India-Romania business relationship. “We are like-minded countries,” he says, and he clearly means more than diplomatic courtesy. In his view, India’s closeness to Europe rests on a shared commitment to the “rule of law” and “freedom of speech,” values “that Europeans take pride in” and that India, he says, equally respects. During the pandemic, he recalls, when many countries shut their doors to essential medicines and vaccines, “India opened its door.” That memory matters because it shapes how India wants to be seen today: not simply as a supplier or a vast market, but as a reliable, values-based partner.
This argument feeds directly into business confidence. Companies, he says, always seek lower risk and higher returns, but they also look for predictability. Romania matters to Indian investors because it is part of the European Union, because the rules are visible, and because the overall environment appears stable. “You are a European Union country, so everybody would be feeling safe,” the ambassador says. Safety here means more than physical security. It means legal continuity, regulatory clarity and a business climate in which investors can plan for the long term.
The embassy’s role is to disseminate information, connect the right institutions, and clear channels of communication – Dr. Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, Ambassador of India to Romania
In that framework, Romania’s competitive edge becomes easier to understand. The ambassador points to labor costs in Eastern Europe that are still 14-18% lower than in Western Europe, but he also stresses skills, openness to investors and ease of doing business. These factors, in his view, help explain why Indian companies are exploring renewable energy, battery storage, recycling, automotive components, agriculture, fertilizers and steel.
Results at affordable prices
For Ambassador Mohapatra, India’s promise is not only technological competence. It is competence at a price that changes the economics of whole sectors. “It is not only the technology, it is the affordability,” he says, insisting that cost is not a secondary advantage but one of India’s defining strengths. In renewable energy, storage, recycling, infrastructure, and digital technologies, India’s claim is that it can combine industrial scale with a cost structure that make projects easier to finance, quicker to replicate, and more attractive for those who are following results.
He supports that claim with numbers. India is already generating more than 500 GW of power, he says, with close to half coming from renewable and low-carbon sources, including hydro and nuclear. By 2030, India wants to reach 500 GW from renewables alone. He also points to what he describes as the largest solar power plant on earth, spread over 750 square kilometers, “triple the size of Bucharest or Paris,” capable of generating more than 30 GW from a single site. On storage, he says India can deliver “close to 15 units of storage” for one dollar, whether in hydrogen or lithium-ion batteries. On solar, he argues that India generates 40-45 kilowatts of solar energy without battery storage for one dollar. The phrasing is conversational, but the point is clear: India wants to be seen as a supplier of scale at highly competitive cost.
The ambassador notes that India has invested more than USD 2 trillion in infrastructure over the last five years and says the country now develops 36-37 kilometers of highways every day, alongside 12-18 kilometers of double-line electrified railway every day, with 99% of its train lines electrified. He contrasts metro construction costs as well: where a Romanian line may cost around EUR 120 million per kilometer, he says, India can build at around USD 25-30 million per kilometer on the surface and roughly USD 50 million underground.
The implication for Romania is clear: Indian companies come not only with capital, but with experience accumulated at a scale that Europe rarely matches.
From the Moon to Europe via Romania
One of the ambassador’s most memorable images comes from space. India, he says with visible pride, reached the “other side of the moon” where others had struggled and failed. In 2023, Chandrayaan-3 became the first mission to land successfully near the Moon’s south pole, after India’s lunar program had already helped confirm the presence of water on the Moon.
The ambassador uses that achievement not simply as a patriotic anecdote, but as evidence of a model of remarkable efficiency: India can move from frontier technology to practical application without losing sight of affordability. The rhetorical flourish captures the route by which Indian know-how in solar, storage, recycling, AI, mobility, and advanced engineering could now find an industrial foothold inside the EU.
Romania occupies a privileged place in that route because, in the ambassador’s words, Indian companies are not coming “to Romania per se”; they are coming to Romania “to manufacture the products for the whole European Union.” That is perhaps the core investment thesis behind the new wave of interest. Romania is seen as a gateway: a place where Indian firms can locate production, logistics, recycling and energy assets close to EU markets while benefiting from lower costs, local capabilities and growing strategic relevance. The ambassador pointed to discussions and projects already underway in wind, solar, storage, waste to power, automotive components, fertilizers and steel, and also mentioned a forthcoming lithium-ion battery recycling investment in Prahova, designed to collect batteries from across the EU and recover rare earth materials.
That wider European logic also explains why the ambassador sees energy as the natural spearhead of deeper cooperation. India, he says plainly, is “an energy hungry country,” while Romania has strategic assets that can support both domestic and regional industrial development. He imagines cooperation in which Romanian gas resources and Indian fertilizer demand could support manufacturing here, with benefits not only for Romania and India, but for other European markets as well. He sees recycling as a circular-economy platform, renewable energy as the most visible point of entry, and the broader EU-India framework as the foundation that makes such projects easier to imagine and easier to execute. His closing message was both diplomatic and unmistakably commercial: Indian investors and industrialists, particularly in energy, are “knocking the door of Romania.” “Let’s work together, make the planet greener,” Ambassador Manoj Kumar Mohapatra says.
