India’s aerospace industry is on a steady path toward meaningful growth, and with it, the demand for aerospace engineers is set to rise significantly in the coming years.
Comparing India with developed nations like the United States, there are around eight to nine aircraft per 100,000 people, while in India, the figure is just one.
A large section of India’s population has never travelled by air. If air travel demand in India even reaches half of what it is in the US, the potential for growth for the country’s aerospace sector would be immense. These observations were shared by Alok Nanda, Chief Technology Officer at GE Aerospace’s India Technology Centre, in a conversation with THE WEEK.
Nanda further pointed out that India’s middle class alone comprises about 400 million people out of the total 1.4 billion population, equivalent to the entire population of the US. So if we are like 1/8th or even less than that in terms of aircraft fleet, we have a very nice growth coming up for this area.
GE Aerospace’s Next Engineers program in India
Interestingly, the GE Aerospace Foundation has partnered with the United Way Bengaluru (UWBe) to launch the Next Engineers program in Bengaluru, India. The expansion of Next Engineers to India will help increase access to STEM education for students and grow the local engineering pipeline by inspiring and preparing the next generation of engineering leaders. It is a four-year college and career readiness program that will reach 4,000 students to expand the engineering talent pipeline. The initiative offers hands-on learning, career exposure, and university preparation to encourage students to pursue engineering careers.
“The whole idea of this program is that we are committed to developing engineers for the future. And hence, now we said that okay, why not go a little upstream. People who have already joined engineering institutions are committed to it. We thought, can we have another set of population who is committed to engineering and science and innovation?” remarked Nanda.
But how much time will the students have to devote to the program besides their usual school curriculum?
“The idea is to supplement and complement so that they don't lose interest because of a lack of quality education, and second, they also get the exposure where they become competitive when they compete for an engineering seat later. We also have coaching and other exposures like scientific experiments and volunteers going in and professional coaches going in to train the students by solving their problems or answering their queries,” added Nanda.
The Next Engineers program will include Engineering Discovery for early secondary school students and Engineering Academy for older students preparing for higher education. Students in the Academy will engage in immersive design challenges, career coaching, and university-readiness workshops. Eligible students who complete the Academy and pursue engineering degrees will also have access to scholarships. Programming begins in early 2026, to reach more than 4,000 students in Bengaluru over four years.
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Bengaluru is the latest city to join the Next Engineers initiative and is the first Next Engineers program launched in the Asia-Pacific region. This follows the expansion of the program in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the launch of the program in Warsaw, Poland, in 2024, with more to be added. The GE Aerospace Foundation has committed up to $20 million over 5 years to continue the program into 2030.
“Bengaluru has long been a center of innovation and engineering excellence, making it a natural fit for our Next Engineers program,” said Meghan Thurlow, President of the GE Aerospace Foundation and Global Head of Public Affairs at GE Aerospace. “Through our partnership with United Way Bengaluru, we will inspire and prepare thousands of local students to pursue careers in engineering, all part of our efforts to lift people up in the communities where we live and work,” she added.
Interestingly, GE Aerospace has also been actively using AI in the aerospace field and has been very successful in it. It is one of the top patent holders for AI in the aviation industry. “We have deployed artificial intelligence in all the areas of our business, whether it's to improve our own internal productivity or to make our customers more efficient or to make our products more user-friendly or to have predictability on when our products need maintenance,” Nanda told THE WEEK.