India and New Zealand's joint love of cricket will be on show next week when John Key travels to Mumbai and New Delhi with former Black Caps star Brendon McCullum in tow.

Key is leading a high-level business and education delegation to India on Monday, which includes the executive chair of CricHQ – a cricket app and data company, which McCullum is an investor in.

This isn't the first time Key has used the power of cricket celebrities while visiting India – in 2011 he took former Black Caps captain Stephen Fleming along.

GETTY IMAGES Brendon McCullum isn't the first Black Cap to tag along with John Key to India – Stephen Fleming made a trip there in 2011.

With a free-trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries in the pipeline, New Zealand will be leveraging off its cricket ties to further cement their relationship with India, given cricket is their most popular sport.

"We're very keen to progress a free-trade agreement - we're both members of RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) so that's one way home, but maybe a quicker and easier way might be a bilateral deal," Key said.

"It's a discussion point that we've got. It's a little less about whether there could be an FTA and a little more about what the quality of the FTA would look like."

Black Caps Brendon McCullum and John Key ahead of McCullum's 100th test in February.

In New Delhi, Key will meet with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee, who visited New Zealand earlier this year.

"India is a key partner for New Zealand. It is a leading source of skilled migrants, international students and tourists, and in the five years since I last visited our two way trade has grown by 41 per cent to $2.4 billion," Key said.

"The India-New Zealand relationship will only continue to grow, and this visit will help drive New Zealand's political and commercial partnership with the world's third-largest economy."

Business representatives from a range of industry including IT, aviation, education and primary industries will be travelling with Key from companies including, Air New Zealand, Fonterra, Zespri, Asia New Zealand Foundation and several universities.

National MPs Mark Mitchell and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi will also be part of the delegation.

India is our seventh-largest export market and Indians make up four per cent of New Zealand's population and eight per cent of Auckland's.

By 2022 India is expected to have the world's largest population so Key will be doing his best to get a trade deal struck after multiple attempts failing to date.

Another issue expected to come up is Indian students being deported from New Zealand because of rogue agents filling out false documentation.

"We're not discriminatory, we've deported people before who have broken the rules from a variety of countries. Certainly I feel for the students and the position they're in considering they didn't knowingly break the rules. But there will be an appeal process and it's quite possible some of them will be successful," Key said.

If New Zealand's system isn't "robust and fair" it sends a message to agents, including in India, that "if you flout the rules you get away with it," he said.

Key also expects to be lobbied by India, who are seeking membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which aims to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"New Zealand's position is quite transparent. We're with a group of other like-minded countries who have said, it's possible they could join but we've said we'd like to see them meet some of the conditions we've been setting out, which don't require them to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, but do require them to meet conditions akin to that," he said.