A poor batting display after winning the toss had the Black Caps all out for 157 after 38 overs and India got home with relative ease, winning by eight wickets with more than 13 overs left.
India played with confidence throughout and its bowlers looked to have the better of the Black Caps' top order.
Black Caps openers Martin Guptill and Colin Munro were both out before the score reached 20 and once Ross Taylor went with just 52 runs on the board, the home side was always going to battle to post a competitive total.
Much of the talk before the game was how good the wicket was going to be and a score of 300 was a realistic target.
But New Zealand never got close and it needs to go back to the basics. Simply bat in partnerships and keep the scoreboard ticking over.
Too many wickets fell at the wrong time for New Zealand to be competitive.
But this was only the first game of eight - counting the three twenty20 matches - that the New Zealanders will play against India in the next two and a-half weeks, so there is plenty of time for the Black Caps to get back into winning action.
All of a sudden the match at Mount Maunganui tomorrow shapes as a crunch game.
Go two games down in a five match series and New Zealand will be in big trouble.
Black Caps pace bowler Lockie Ferguson said yesterday at a media conference the side knew it had not played well in Napier but was confident it could turn things round quickly.
Ferguson said the heavy loss was just part of the game and the side was not worried.
"We have looked at what went wrong. We will park it and look forward to Tauranga, where we have done well," Ferguson said.
"We still bowled aggressively. The bowling team tries to take wickets throughout. We had some early chances ... that is still the mindset, no matter if we have 150 or 350 on the board."
Ferguson said the side would look forward to playing at Bay Park in the second and third games of the series, as the New Zealand side enjoyed playing on the ground.
