Nagpur has been the centre of commerce in the Vidarbha region since early days and currently is a large trading centre for a number of commodities and services. However, Nagpur's economic importance has gradually declined relative to Mumbai and Pune after the merging of Vidarbha into the Maharashtra as a result of a prolonged period of neglect by the state government. During this period, the state and central government offices were a major source of employment in the city. However, Nagpur is witnessing an economic boom in recent years and attracted Rs. 5,000 crore in investment in 2004. A multimodal cargo and passanger hub project briefly known as cargo hub project is coming up near Nagpur international airport. The project named as Multimodal International Hub Airport At Nagpur(MIHAN) will act as "break of bulk" point for heavy cargo coming from south east asia and Middle east asia. Currently Boeing has shown keen interest in setting up 500 crore Maintainance, repairing and Overhauling (MRO) unit at Nagpur keeping in view the geographical location of Nagpur.

Currently a significant number of industries are located within the vicinity of Nagpur city. The Butibori industrial area is the largest in all of Asia in terms of area. The estate's largest unit is Indo Rama Synthetics, which manufactures synthetic polyester yarn. Other notable units in Butibori include the power transmission company KEC, Hyundai Unitech, ACC Nihon Castings Ltd. The estate also houses a number of other textile units, a washing machine plant belonging to the Videocon group, besides several medium-sized units that manufacture a variety of products. In addition, the first food park in the state of Maharashtra is located in the estate. Though Butibori could not quite live up to its original promise, industrial activity is picking up due to the saturation in the Mumbai-Thane-Pune belt.

The Hingna industrial estate located on the western fringes of the city is made up of around 900 small and medium industrial units. The major ones among them are tractor manufacturing plant of Mahindra and Mahindra, casting units of NECO Ltd. (the country's largest casting group), units of International Combustions, Bajaj Auto group, Candico (the SECOND largest confectionary manufacturing plant in India), Ajanta toothbrushes, Sanvijay Group (largest steel rolling group of companies for long products in Central India) and Vicco Laboratories, which specializes in ayurvedic products. Moreover, Nagpur is also home to well-known ice-cream maker Dinshaws and the nationally famous sweetmaker Haldiram's.

Even the Real estate Bigges like DLF is Planning to open an IT infor prak as well as the IT SEZ in Nagpur. Nagpur is also the next most favoured Information Technology (IT) destination in Maharashtra after Mumbai and Pune due to factors favorable to the IT industry like the city's location, good infrastructure (the spick and span four laned roads of Nagpur give it a leverage compared to Pune and even Banglore), and the availability of a large and relatively cheap pool of skilled labor from local and regional educational institutions. In the near future, Nagpur will also have a Rs. 10,000 crore Special Economic Zone (SEZ) attached that has already attracted some of India's top-notch Information Technology companies like Satyam Computer Services and L&T Infocity.