Most people think entering a new market is about having a great product and a solid plan.
After three months working with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile on their India market entry strategy — I’m not so sure anymore.
The Brief
As part of our MSc at emlyon business school, each student group was assigned a real client, a real country, and a real problem to solve. We got FIA. We got India.
The brief was deceptively simple: FIA believed India had potential across their three core areas — Motorsports, Mobility, and Tourism. They just didn’t know which one, how much, or where to start.
Our team was about as multicultural as it gets — two Chinese, one Italian, one French, and one Indian. Me. Which turned out to matter more than we expected.
What We Actually Did
We started where everyone starts , with desk research. Porter’s Five Forces. Business Model Canvas. Market reports. The usual frameworks.
And we hit a wall almost immediately.
What was available online was surface level at best. India’s motorsport landscape isn’t well documented. The real picture lived in people’s heads — insiders, founders, executives, advisors who had spent years navigating this market.
So we went to them directly.
We interviewed FIA’s own business analysts and consultants. We spoke to the Head of Travel and Tourism at FIA. We reached motorsport founders and racing entrepreneurs building the ecosystem from scratch in India. We talked to a PWC Sports Advisory consultant based in India who understood the political and commercial landscape better than any report could capture.
Eight conversations. Eight different perspectives. And slowly, a picture emerged that was very different from what we expected.
What We Found
India was not ready for Formula 1.
That became clear quickly. While interest in motorsports was genuinely growing — the passion was there, the energy was getting there the ecosystem simply wasn’t mature enough. Infrastructure, sponsorship, media coverage, government support — none of it was in place.
As one motorsport founder told us directly — the talent and energy existed, but without media coverage, sponsors weren’t coming. Without sponsors, the talent stayed invisible. A classic chicken-and-egg problem.
So we pivoted the question entirely.
Instead of asking “how does FIA enter India through motorsports?” we asked “where does FIA have the most to offer India right now?”
The answer was clear — road safety, e-mobility, and university talent development.
India’s road accident statistics are alarming. The e-mobility sector is exploding in doubling rates in the past few years And engineering universities across the country are producing exceptional talent with nowhere to channel their passion for automotive technology.
FIA didn’t need to arrive in India as a racing federation. They needed to arrive as a safety and mobility authority — planting roots, building credibility, and being present when the motorsport moment finally came.
The Moment That Changed My Thinking
Some of the most revealing moments in our interviews weren’t in the official answers.
They were in what people said carefully mentions of corruption within motorsport stakeholder networks, of government bodies prioritising cricket above everything else, of decisions being made on relationships rather than merit, of short-term revenue thinking blocking any long-term vision.
I came into this project thinking that market entry was a strategic exercise. Define your audience, map your channels, build your plan, execute.
What I left with was something more uncomfortable — and more real.
A good product and a great plan are the starting point. But a market is not a spreadsheet. It’s a web of people, politics, culture, history, and incentives that all have to align before anything moves.
India has 1.4 billion people, dozens of languages, wildly different regional cultures, and a complex political structure. What works in Mumbai doesn’t work in Chennai. What excites a motorsport fan in Coimbatore doesn’t resonate the same way in Delhi.
The number of stakeholders you need to bring along — government bodies, local organisations, media, sponsors, educational institutions, community leaders is staggering. Every single one of them needs to see something in it for them before they move.
That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a relationship and ecosystem problem. And it takes years, not quarters.
The GTM Lesson
Our go-to-market recommendation wasn’t what FIA expected when they gave us the brief.
We didn’t hand them a Formula 1 roadmap. We handed them a long game.
One of our most unconventional recommendations was to leverage Indian celebrity culture. In regions where motorsport was gaining traction, we identified the potential of aligning with influential figures — celebrities, athletes, cultural icons , who could bring their audiences into the conversation.
This wasn’t a random idea. Around the same time, Ajith Kumar, a Tamil actor, who was also a driver himself publicly associated himself with motorsport , started his own team— and the response was extraordinary. Crowds showed up. The internet was surprised. Indians who had never considered motorsport suddenly had a reason to pay attention.
That moment validated exactly what we had argued: you don’t force a western product into a new market. You find what already resonates — the celebrities, the local heroes, the cultural touchpoints — and you let the product meet the audience where they already are.
Identify your audience. Shape the product to their world. Naturalise it to the market.
That’s not just a GTM lesson. That’s the only way it works.