Landing a moon-shot in the world’s busiest corridor.

Hyperloop One promised 1,000 km/h travel; India promised the population, scale and political will to leapfrog conventional rail. But before steel met soil the vision needed local trust, cultural relevance and policy momentum.

Lazy Eight became the on-ground translator. We worked with Hyperloop’s U S leadership to recast the narrative for India: from “Silicon-Valley sci-fi” to “next-generation freight, jobs and carbon relief for Mumbai–Pune and beyond.” Regional storytelling, Hindi-Marathi explainer films, and India-specific cost-benefit decks reframed the tech as a solution for today, not a gadget from tomorrow.

Our remit spread fast—stakeholder maps, white-papers for NITI Aayog, media tool-kits for state governments, UX prototypes showing ticketing and freight portals in local languages. We sat in joint task-force meetings with urban-planning firms and helped shape the talking points that reached cabinet tables.

Result: Hyperloop One secured MoUs with Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, kicked off feasibility studies and put ultra-high-speed transit into mainland headlines for the first time. A project where brand design, public policy and engineering audacity had to march in lockstep—and where localisation turned a U S vision into an Indian possibility.