Indian manufacturers are redesigning products, from ice creams and air conditioners to tyres and electric vehicle batteries, to make them more resilient to rising temperatures and extreme weather events.
“New designs are being attempted, as higher temperatures are recorded every year. The attempt is to make the machine more reliable, while conforming to energy efficiency standards," said B. Thiagarajan, managing director of Mumbai-based AC maker Blue Star Ltd.
Climate change burden
India, the world's fifth-largest consumer market, is projected to become the third-largest by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum. However, climate change poses a clear and present economic and ecological challenge as the country is the world's seventh most climate-vulnerable, according to the Economic Survey 2024-25.
Temperatures frequently exceeding 45° Celsius across northern, northwestern, and central India over the past few years, and longer, more intense heatwaves in 2026, coupled with a delayed south-west monsoon due to El Niño conditions, highlight the country's growing climate risks.
India's economic losses from climate-related disasters exceeded $12 billion in 2023, 50% more than the previous ten-year average of $8 billion, according to research by reinsurance company Swiss Re.
The impact of climate change extends well beyond disasters and agriculture, increasingly affecting the performance and durability of everyday products—from food to electronics.
For example, for Indian ice cream makers, which produced about 400 million litres annually before the covid-19 pandemic, rising temperatures present a paradox. While hotter weather boosts demand, it also causes ice cream to melt faster, increasing freezing, storage and cold-chain costs.
“Ice cream manufacturers are using hardening tunnels to quickly freeze products to below -30°C. Retailers, meanwhile, are replacing conventional freezers with glycol freezers that use a glycol-water mixture to maintain temperatures ranging from -18°C to -48°C," said Charanjit Singh Basant, managing director of Ludhiana-based Basant Ice Cream and Foods Pvt. Ltd.
Although the acquisition cost of these machines is high—around ₹2-3 crore for a hardening tunnel—the increased production capacity helps lower overall production costs, removing the need to raise prices in a competitive market, he added.
K. Rathnam, chief executive and whole-time director of initial public offering (IPO)-bound Milky Mist Dairy Food Ltd, said the company has built climate considerations into its packaging and supply chain.
“Our packaging is designed keeping in mind varying environmental conditions, including high temperatures. Climatic factors are incorporated into the design process to ensure product quality and integrity throughout the supply chain,” he said.
Climate resilience has become an increasingly important consideration, with investments focused on efficient manufacturing and cold-chain infrastructure, added Gaurav Kwatra, chief marketing officer at Bengaluru-based ready-to-cook product maker iD Fresh Food.
In 2025, India recorded a maximum temperature of 49.5°C in Rajasthan and a minimum of -31.2°C in Ladakh.
Road surface temperatures often exceed 60°C during peak summer, even when ambient temperatures are around 40-45°C, placing tyres under significantly higher thermal stress.
“This phenomenon has accelerated innovation in material science, advanced compound technologies, tread design and validation processes,” said V.K. Misra, technical director at New Delhi-based JK Tyre & Industries Ltd.
Must-have consideration
Experts say that, from a materials perspective, industries will need to adopt higher-heat-resistant insulation materials, advanced cooling technologies, corrosion-resistant components, and designs that improve thermal performance and durability.
Amit Tripathi, director at Dravya—the IIHS Centre for Materials and Sustainable Development—highlighted that manufacturers must re-engineer power-sector infrastructure products such as transformers, cables and substations to improve heat resilience and develop solutions tailored to the country's changing climate.
India’s power system is among the world’s most complex, with 500,000 circuit kilometres of transmission lines and 1,407 Gigavolt-Amperes (GVA) of transformation capacity, supplying electricity to over 35 million households.
India sold a record 14 million ACs in 2024, adding to the growing strain on the country's power grid as rising cooling demand pushed peak electricity demand to 250GW, according to the International Energy Agency's Energy Efficiency 2025 report, the latest available.
“Consistent performance during extended periods of extreme heat while also being energy efficient and reliable over the long term is critical given the worsening heat,” said Kamal Nandi, business head at the appliances business of Godrej Enterprises Group.
Climate resilience is not just good to have now, but a must-have consideration in product innovation strategy, he added.
Manufacturers are leading efforts to make products more heat-resilient as consumer complaints rise with frequent heatwaves.
Manufacturers look for latent needs specified by consumers, and accordingly make changes to the product, said Gurudas Nulkar, professor and director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics.
"The competitive nature of India’s consumer market helps. In a competitive market, if one manufacturer does it, everyone does it. If top brands make changes, others follow,” he added.
Battery overheating, for instance, has long been a consumer concern, according to Debi Goenka, executive trustee at Mumbai-based non-profit Conservation Action Trust, adding that rising temperatures automatically exacerbate the risk.
"Heat stress is a major hurdle for economic productivity, with it impacting the labour force, agriculture, horticulture, and overall economic growth,” he emphasized.
Meanwhile, India's EV battery industry is increasingly shifting from nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) to lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) cells because of their superior heat resistance, despite their lower energy density, said Debmalya Sen, president of the India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA).
“Most of the visible change so far is in cell chemistry and insulation, not in exotic new materials. There is increasing usage of phase-change materials (PCMs), glass wool, rubber foam and rock wool-based insulation to manage heat spread between cells,” Sen added.
However, India remains considerably import-dependent for building heat resilience in emerging new energy products. “Cooling hardware materials, aluminium cooling plates and improved thermal interface compounds are being localized, though core refrigerant and compressor components are still import-dependent,” Sen said.