Startups, freelancers and emerging businesses now account for more than half of first-time customers on the Autodesk Store in India. Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities contribute more than 20% of the online customer base. At the same time, India’s infrastructure pipeline, manufacturing expansion and growing creator economy are creating demand at the enterprise end of the market. Nikhil Vijay Bagalkotkar, Director, AEC, Autodesk India & SAARC explains exclusively to Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media that the opportunity for Autodesk is both breadth and depth. Autodesk is therefore expanding adoption among a new generation of users while continuing to support the country’s largest and most complex projects. This makes India an important long-term growth market for Autodesk.
Autodesk has been a leader in the digital design and manufacturing ecosystem. What solutions and services are available in the Autodesk portfolio today in India, and what are their use cases?
In India, Autodesk’s portfolio spans three major industries- Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC), Design and Manufacturing (D&M), and Media & Entertainment (M&E) with solutions designed to address the specific workflows and challenges within each.
In AEC, our portfolio supports the journey from planning and design through construction and operations. Revit enables BIM-based building design and coordination, Civil 3D supports infrastructure design, Forma helps teams with early-stage planning and project collaboration, and Autodesk Construction Cloud connects project teams and information through construction. Autodesk Tandem extends this digital thread into operations through digital twins.
In Design and Manufacturing, solutions such as Fusion, Inventor and Vault help companies move from product design and engineering through manufacturing and data management, enabling more connected workflows and greater automation. This is particularly relevant as Indian manufacturers look to improve productivity, accelerate product development and compete in global markets.
In Media & Entertainment, tools such as Maya, 3ds Max and Flame support 3D animation, visual effects, rendering and content creation across film, television, advertising and gaming.
Across these industries, the opportunity is increasingly about connecting data, workflows and teams helping Indian businesses move from disconnected tools and processes towards more integrated, intelligent ways of designing and making.
With infrastructure pipeline, manufacturing expansion, and the rapid emergence of a creator economy beyond Tier 2/Tier 3 markets, how does Autodesk view India as a significant growth market?
India is a significant and increasingly strategic growth market for Autodesk, and we are seeing that opportunity reflected in the growth and diversity of our customer base. What is particularly exciting is that growth is no longer coming only from large infrastructure and manufacturing enterprises; it is increasingly being driven by startups, smaller businesses, freelancers and creators adopting professional-grade design and making technologies.
That shift is visible in our Autodesk Store business. Startups, freelancers and emerging businesses now account for more than half of first-time customers on the Store in India, while Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities contribute more than 20% of our online customer base. This tells us that the addressable market for professional design and engineering software in India is expanding well beyond the traditional metros and large enterprises.
We have responded by making our portfolio more accessible through a self-serve digital experience, giving smaller businesses and individual professionals greater flexibility in how they access Autodesk technology.
At the same time, India’s infrastructure pipeline, manufacturing expansion and growing creator economy are creating demand at the enterprise end of the market. So, from our perspective, the opportunity is both breadth and depth — expanding adoption among a new generation of users while continuing to support the country’s largest and most complex projects. That combination makes India an important long-term growth market for Autodesk.
What are the key pillars of Autodesk’s Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy in India? How is the entire partner ecosystem structured?
Our GTM strategy in India rests on three pillars: Expand, Transform, and Diversify. Expand means deepening our presence across priority geographies, particularly beyond Tier 1 cities, where we’re building out Tier 2 markets through a hub-and-spoke model that pairs local reach with the scale of established partner hubs. Transform is about moving our existing top-tier partners from license-led selling toward value-driven engagement across a customer’s full lifecycle, from advisory through implementation. Diversify means widening who sits inside the ecosystem itself.
That third pillar shapes the ecosystem’s structure today. Alongside our legacy resellers, who bring deep technology and industry expertise built over years, we now work with ISVs and service-led partners who bring specialised, implementation-focused capability. Increasingly, these two groups collaborate directly with each other on live customer projects, combining product expertise with execution. Global system integrators add scale for large transformation programmes, while a newer government-focused partner group reflects the pace of public sector infrastructure investment in the country.
What connects all of this is a shift in what success looks like. Partners are moving away from selling licenses and toward owning customer outcomes across the full plan-design-build-operate lifecycle. As India’s infrastructure and manufacturing base scales beyond the metros, the strength of that ecosystem, not any single technology, will determine how quickly the rest of the country gets access to it.
Which verticals are seeing the most traction for Autodesk solutions and services in 2026, and what are their use cases?
Across our three core verticals, AECO, Design & Manufacturing, and Media & Entertainment, it’s AECO and Design & Manufacturing that are seeing the strongest momentum in India this year, driven largely by how fast AI is being layered onto existing workflows. Our 2026 State of Design & Make: AI Pulse survey found India leading Asia Pacific on nearly every AI adoption metric, with 91% of Indian companies increasing AI investment year over year.
In AECO, the use case is connected project delivery at scale, bringing design, cost, schedule and site data into one common environment so large infrastructure and construction programmes can coordinate multiple contractors and disciplines without losing time to version mismatches or delayed handoffs.
In Design & Manufacturing, the traction is around simulation-led product development, using generative design and integrated simulation to compress prototyping and iteration cycles, so manufacturers can test and refine designs digitally before committing to physical builds.
The common thread across both is the move towards more connected, AI-enabled workflows, with companies using technology not just to automate tasks, but to make faster, better-informed decisions across the project or product lifecycle.
How is Autodesk positioning design, Building Information Modeling (BIM), and digital twins to service India’s massive infrastructure pipeline?
India’s infrastructure pipeline is expanding faster than siloed approaches to design and delivery can keep up with. As projects grow larger and more complex, spanning multiple disciplines, contractors, and years of execution, coordinating accurate project information becomes as important as the engineering itself.
BIM has become the industry’s response to that coordination problem, replacing fragmented drawings and disconnected teams with a shared, structured model of a project. Our BIM Package for Viksit Bharat brings India-specific content and workflows directly into Revit and Civil 3D, supporting consistent BIM adoption nationally. Projects like L&T’s redevelopment of SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack, Revit and BIM 360 helped coordinate more than 14 disciplines across a 44-acre site, cutting drawing production time by 54%.
Digital twins take this one step further by connecting the digital representation of an asset with information about its real-world performance. Instead of BIM being primarily used to understand what was designed and built, a digital twin can help owners understand how an asset is operating — bringing together information on equipment, systems, spaces and performance to support monitoring, maintenance and decision-making. Over time, this can help shift facility management from reacting to problems to identifying potential issues earlier and making more informed decisions about maintenance and asset performance.
As India’s infrastructure portfolio keeps growing, the real advantage lies in convergence, design, BIM, and digital twins operating as one continuous thread, so the same data that guides design continues to guide how infrastructure performs for decades after handover.
From infrastructure to manufacturing to media & entertainment, how is Autodesk transitioning enterprise customers away from isolated file-based workflows to unified cloud environments and data?
The move from file-based workflows to the cloud is fundamentally changing how organisations collaborate and make decisions. At Autodesk, this is central to the evolution of our Design and Make platform and our unified cloud platform, which brings people, data and workflows together across the project lifecycle. As projects become more complex, isolated files create silos that make it harder for teams to work from the same information. Across infrastructure, manufacturing and media & entertainment, we are seeing a shift toward connected workflows where design data, project information and teams can work together seamlessly. Cloud environments make that possible by enabling greater collaboration, access to the latest data and more seamless movement between design, engineering and delivery.
Our cloud-based solutions connect people and data while streamlining workflows, allowing customers to build on their existing investments rather than requiring an overnight transformation. This connected foundation also becomes increasingly important as AI enters enterprise workflows. AI can only deliver meaningful value when it has access to the right context and data. The shift, therefore, is from disconnected workflows to connected ways of working. That is where enterprises can unlock greater productivity, agility and innovation.
With Autodesk embedding nearly 70 AI models into its design platform, how is the company today driving enterprise productivity through AI tools and connected project delivery?
AI is shifting enterprise productivity from simply automating tasks to helping teams make better decisions across the project lifecycle. The shift is from AI being a standalone tool to becoming an integrated capability within the platforms professionals already use.
At Autodesk, with nearly 70 AI models embedded across the design and make platform, AI can support everything from automating repetitive work and accelerating ideation to generating and evaluating design alternatives. For engineers, designers and creators, this means reducing time spent on manual, repetitive processes and creating more capacity for higher-value work such as problem-solving, innovation and decision-making.
We are also seeing the value of AI increase when it is connected to the broader project environment. When AI is combined with connected cloud data, teams can work from a shared context rather than isolated files or applications, enabling faster collaboration and more informed decisions across design, engineering and delivery. For enterprises, the real productivity gain comes from connecting these capabilities across workflows, rather than optimising individual tasks in isolation.
What were the salient findings of the AI Pulse Report 2026 and how will these findings drive Autodesk’s strategy going forward?
The AI Pulse Report 2026 shows that India has moved decisively from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption. The key shift is that AI is increasingly being treated as a driver of productivity, innovation and business transformation rather than a standalone technology. Indian organisations are leading APAC in AI investment, with 91% increasing their AI investment over the past year. Adoption is also translating into tangible outcomes, with 88% of organisations reporting improved productivity, 84% stronger innovation and 75% better decision-making. At the same time, the report highlights that scaling AI responsibly will require organisations to address skills, data quality, system integration and regulatory uncertainty.
For Autodesk, these findings across 2500 global industry leaders reinforce the importance of embedding AI within the workflows where people design and make the physical world. Our strategy is therefore focused not simply on adding AI capabilities, but on combining industry-specific AI with connected data and human expertise to solve real challenges. India’s lead in adoption creates a significant opportunity, where the next phase is about converting adoption into sustained business value. The organisations that succeed will be those that move beyond using AI as a tool and integrate it into how work gets done, decisions are made, and innovation is delivered.
To make its products more accessible, Autodesk has expanded its online store and introduced flexible licensing options through its Flex offering. What are the initiatives undertaken under this Digital-First Self-Serve Commerce domain by revamping the Autodesk India Store?
The shift to digital-first commerce is about making professional technology more accessible, flexible, and aligned to how customers work today. The traditional licensing model often assumed predictable, long-term requirements, but freelancers, startups and smaller businesses increasingly need the ability to scale access around their projects. With the revamped Autodesk India Store, we have simplified the journey from discovering products to purchasing and managing subscriptions online, while offering greater flexibility in how customers access the Autodesk platform. This includes options such as monthly subscriptions and Autodesk Flex, which allows customers to use tokens for eligible products based on their requirements.
The broader objective is to reduce friction in adoption. Customers should be able to start small, choose the model that fits their business, and scale as their needs evolve. For Autodesk, digital-first self-serve commerce is therefore not just about changing the buying experience; it is about lowering the entry barrier to professional technology and enabling more businesses, creators, and emerging teams to participate in the Design and Make economy.
How is Autodesk reaching out to emerging designers, tech startups, and engineering firms beyond metros to build the creator economy?
India’s creator economy will not be built by metros alone. The opportunity is to ensure emerging designers, engineers, and startups across the country have access to the same professional technology and skills that are available to larger enterprises. Autodesk is helping broaden that access through flexible digital purchasing and cloud-based tools that allow individuals and smaller firms to adopt professional capabilities as their needs grow. Flex is another important part of this approach, allowing customers with project-based or occasional needs to access Autodesk technology without the commitment of a traditional long-term licence. The objective is not simply to expand software adoption, but to widen participation in the Design and Make economy. India’s advantage is its depth of engineering and creative talent; making that talent more connected to professional tools and global opportunities can help the next generation of creators and businesses emerge from every part of the country.
How is Autodesk lowering adoption barriers for freelancers and startups via monthly subscription plans and token-based pay-per-use systems?
For freelancers and startups, technology adoption needs to be flexible enough to match the way they work. The traditional model of committing upfront to software can be difficult when project requirements, team sizes, and budgets change quickly. At Autodesk, we are addressing this through flexible subscription and consumption options on the Autodesk Store platform. Monthly subscriptions give customers the ability to access professional tools without a long-term commitment, while Autodesk Flex enables token-based, pay-per-use access for eligible products, particularly useful for occasional, project-based, or fluctuating needs.
This gives smaller businesses the ability to start with what they need, manage costs around actual usage and scale their access as their business grows. Our objective is to make professional design and engineering technology more accessible without lowering the standard of capability. For India’s growing base of freelancers, startups and emerging firms, that flexibility can turn technology from a significant upfront commitment into an enabler of growth.
