His remarks came during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is now in the US on a state visit.
The Indian government announced that it had invited Mr Musk to look into potential opportunities in the field of commercial space travel and electric transportation.
Mr Musk was “trying to figure out the right timing” to make that happen.
Mr Modi’s meeting with Mr Musk, who also owns Twitter, came days after Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey accused India of threatening to shut down the platform for not complying with its orders to take down content from the website.
Mr Dorsey’s allegations, made in an interview with an independent news show, were strongly denied by the Indian government, which called it “an outright lie”.
On Wednesday, Elon Musk responded to the incident and claimed that Twitter had no choice but to follow local laws or “we will get shut down.”
He added, “We will do our best to provide the freest speech that is possible under the law.”
Additionally, Mr Musk identified himself as a “fan of Mr Modi” and declared that India held “more promise than any large country in the world.”
“He [Mr Modi] really cares about India because he’s pushing us to make significant investments in India, which is something we intend to do. We are just trying to figure out the right timing,” he told reporters. “I am confident that Tesla will be in India and will do so as soon as humanly possible.”
As it seeks to penetrate the local market, Tesla has been in discussions with Indian governments and bureaucrats.
Last month, Reuters reported that Tesla had suggested building an electric vehicle factory and was also investigating producing EV batteries in the nation. “They are very seriously looking at India as a production and innovation base,” Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a federal minister, had informed the organisation in May.
The Indian government required that Tesla produce cars locally, despite the carmaker’s claims that it wanted to ship to India first to gauge demand, and the company’s first intentions to establish a base there were shelved last year.
Mr Musk stated that he also planned to bring India’s Starlink satellite internet service, which is run by his business SpaceX.
He told reporters, “We do not want to jump the gun on an announcement, but I think it is quite likely that it will be a significant investment in our relationship with India.”
On Tuesday, Mr Modi flew into New York for a three-day state visit, viewed as a turning point in the bilateral relationship between India and the US.
Before having face-to-face conversations with President Joe Biden on Thursday, he will receive a formal welcome at the White House.
More than 70 US congressmen wrote to Mr Biden on Tuesday, encouraging him to bring up the subject of human rights with Mr Modi while in India. They expressed worry over the country’s escalating religious intolerance, press freedoms, and the persecution of civil society organisations.
