India’s innovation rise offers major opportunities for New Zealand

Over the past two weeks, I had the privilege of travelling across Delhi and Bangalore as part of an innovation and entrepreneurship fellowship hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

The timing felt particularly significant, coming just weeks after the signing of the New Zealand–India Free Trade Agreement, a major milestone in the relationship between our two countries.

India is impossible to ignore. It remains the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and its middle class is expanding rapidly, creating one of the world’s largest future consumer and innovation markets.

What struck me most during the the New Zealand Centre at IIT Delhi Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellowship was not just the scale of India’s economy, but the ambition and momentum across its innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The first week of the Fellowship was based in Delhi, where much of the focus was on government, policy, universities, and national innovation infrastructure.

During this time, I met with organisations including IIT Delhi, Start-up India, the Department of Science and Technology, Wadhwani Innovation, Observer Research Foundation, Social Alpha, and several investors and ecosystem leaders.

Delhi provided insight into how India is intentionally building a coordinated national innovation system. There was strong alignment between government, universities, industry, incubators, and investors around entrepreneurship, research translation, and deeptech innovation.

Initiatives such as Start-up India and the Atal Innovation Mission are building innovation capability at extraordinary scale, from schools and universities through to incubators and frontier technology programmes.

The second week of the Fellowship was spent in Bangalore, often described as the 'Silicon Valley of India', where the focus shifted more toward start-ups, deeptech, venture capital, and commercialisation.

India is now the world’s third-largest start-up ecosystem. Bangalore itself is home to more than 10,000 start-ups and was recently ranked among the world’s leading start-up ecosystems in Start-up Genome’s 2025 Global Start-up Ecosystem Report.

In Bangalore, I met with organisations including IISc, NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore, Atria University, Alliance University, BIORx Venture Advisors, GINSERV, and a number of founders, incubators, and ecosystem builders.

What became particularly clear was the extent to which the city has evolved into a globally significant innovation hub. Many global technology companies now operate major research and development and innovation centres there, while the city has one of the highest concentrations of engineering and technical talent globally.

A major theme across many conversations, was India’s transition from a services-led economy to a product, deeptech, and innovation-driven economy. There's a real national focus on AI, biotech, climate and sustainability technologies, medtech, semiconductors, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing.

One of my strongest observations was that India increasingly has the ability to build globally significant companies largely within its own ecosystem.

Founders can move from research or an idea, through to ventures of substantial scale, entirely within India due to the size of the domestic market, the growing availability of capital from pre-seed through to IPO, and the extraordinary depth of technical talent.

For decades, the world has outsourced software development and technical capability to India. What's emerged is a highly educated, ambitious, and increasingly entrepreneurial workforce building companies, products, and technologies not just for India, but for global markets.

For New Zealand, the opportunities are significant.

India should not simply be viewed as a student recruitment market or export destination. It's increasingly becoming one of the world’s most important innovation ecosystems and a highly valuable partner for collaboration.

There are opportunities for New Zealand companies, entrepreneurs, universities, and research organisations in areas such as agritech, medtech, sustainability, AI, research commercialisation, start-up exchange, translational research, and innovation partnerships.

I leave India with many reflections, ideas, and potential opportunities for future collaboration. The Fellowship reinforced that the future relationship between New Zealand and India will increasingly be shaped not only by trade and education, but by innovation, entrepreneurship, research collaboration, and shared ambition.