Every day at 4 p.m., a little tea stall in Maharashtra’s Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad) turns into an informal conference centre for EV makers and their vendors.

Right outside the city’s newest industrial zone, Aurangabad Industrial City (AURIC), they swap stories about production, land allotments, and their next big orders over glasses of strong ginger-laced tea as their phones buzz with factory updates. This scene has been playing out for decades in this city located about 350km east of Mumbai.

These young vendors are old friends. Their fathers built component factories around........

© The Ken