Tesla Finally Coming to India

Yesterday, while I was in BKC (Bandra-Kurla Complex) for a meeting, I strolled past the construction site of what will become the first Tesla showroom in India. It’s located at Maker Maxity 2 North Avenue, across from the Jio World Drive Mall, which also contains India’s first Apple-owned Apple Store.

I say finally because the entry of Tesla into India has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride. It all started back in April 2016 when Elon Musk announced pre-orders for India for the upcoming Model 3 for a $1000 deposit. As you can imagine, everyone was hyped and geared up, and then nothing.

Then, over the years, he would announce on Twitter that tariffs were too high in India. Then he would say he was meeting with Prime Minister Modi to get clearance. My god, it was safer to invest in Bitcoin than deal with the ups and downs of Tesla coming to India.

With Trump in the White House and Musk running DOGE, it looked like he would have clear access to get the tariff issue settled with the Indian government. But no.

The first sign that things were taking shape was in February 2025 when Tesla signed a 5-year lease for a ground floor space that had to be a dealer location.

It seemed everything was on track, but even then we all have seen this before where things could take a u-turn. Then Musk left DOGE, and at that point I was like, the India launch is going to be put on hold.

Since February, when the location was announced, every time I would go to BKC for a meeting, I did two things: check out the potential Tesla dealer site and, of course, visit Ferrari of Mumbai. Below are the images of the location back in mid-March. Even I lost hope that it was not happening.

Finally, after months I was walking past the construction site and I could see the Tesla logo on the inside of the showroom. And on the outside you can see 5 areas covered on the right side for the T E S L A letters to be unveiled.