Innovation holds the key to a prosperous future

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

India is ranked third globally in AI competitiveness according to Stanford University’s 2025 Global AI Vibrancy Tool. Further, India is also among the world’s largest start-up ecosystems with more than 200,000 recognized startups and more than 120 unicorns. Frontier capability is rising across healthcare, energy/climate, biotech, space, defence, advanced computing, semiconductors, agritech, mobility, materials and other areas. The national initiatives include Atal Incubation Centres which have established support centres in more than 100 institutes and Atal Tinkering Labs in more than 10,000 schools which engage more than 11 million students.

India’s innovation ecosystem has been fortified by the annual Smart India Hackathons which bring in 800,000 students in each edition and yield technology intensive solutions to real world and real world problems. Also worth mentioning is KAPILA through which IP creation in universities has been mainstreamed with over 2000 registrations every year. The key enablers over the past decade include the Startup India Initiative, Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0, the India AI Mission, a strengthened national research architecture, the Research, Development and Innovation Fund, sector specific pathways focused on DeepTech in defence, biotech, space, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Building on this strong and decades long foundation, an ambitious programme called “Bharat Innovates 2026” was announced by Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi on 17 February this year at the inauguration of the India-France Year of Innovation. The programme is designed as a global accelerator for innovations from Indian Higher Education Ecosystem (HEI), thereby, building a long-term collaboration bridge between the country’s innovation ecosystem (startups, HEIs, labs and research parks) and global stakeholders (corporates, investors, incubators/accelerators, universities, research institutes, governments and overseas research parks and deeper industry linkages.

The first edition of “Bharat Innovates” is scheduled to be held in Nice, France from 14 to 16 June 2026. All our friends in the Kingdom of Bahrain are invited to participate in this global event which will showcase India’s top 100 Deep Tech startups across 13 critical technology themes, namely, advanced computing, advanced materials, agriculture and food technologies, biotech, blue economy, disaster management and resilient infrastructure, energy, sustainability and climate change, healthcare and medtech, manufacturing and industry 4.0, next-gen communications, semiconductors, smart cities and mobility as well as space and defence. The event will also be attended by more than 15 of India’s premier educational institutions including the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru which are enabling IP backed venture creation. More details on the programme can be obtained from: https://bharatinnovates.in/

The benefits of participation in “Bharat Innovates 2026” for global stakeholders are expected to include investor grade deal flow, problems to solution access, fast track partnerships with market ready ventures, global soft-landing routes through incubators/ accelerators, a steady stream of R&D opportunities as well as privileged access to a continuous pipeline of industry specific development through India’s research parks and technology labs at top institutions.

(By H.E. Mr. Vinod K Jacob, Ambassador of India to the Kingdom of Bahrain)