Davinder Sandhu, Co-founder and Chairperson, Primus Partners, shares his opinion on India’s strategic gap in rare earth magnet manufacturing. He highlights that neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets are essential to the future of electric vehicles, renewable energy, and advanced defence systems. Despite having the world’s fifth-largest rare earth reserves, India lacks domestic capacity to produce these critical components—posing a significant threat to national ambitions in clean energy and defence. The rare earth value chain is capital-intensive, high-risk, and vulnerable to geopolitical manipulation, deterring private investment. Sandhu underscores that government support must go beyond grants or tax breaks. It should include assured offtake and price guarantees to de-risk long-term investment. Drawing parallels with U.S. examples like Apple’s procurement-backed investment and DARPA’s price assurance, he calls for urgent action to close this strategic blind spot and build a resilient mine-to-magnet ecosystem in India.