IISc: Where India’s Scientific Ambition Becomes Research, Technology and Innovation In Bengaluru, there is a university campus where the trees are old,…

Amity University: From a Noida Campus to a Research, Skills and Global Education Network There was a time when choosing a university…

AI Innovation Meets a Governance Test India's universities are being asked to do two very different things at the same time. They…

LPU at 25: From Campus Learning to Careers, Startups and Global Skills A university campus can be many things. A place to…

The Indian Talent Behind 205 Unicorns Abroad: What $560 Billion Really Says About the Global Diaspora Indian founders who grew up in India are behind 205 current and former unicorns outside the country, with about $560 billion in founder-share-attributed company value. The extraordinary number celebrates the global Indian entrepreneurial network—but it also raises a harder question: why has so much of this value been built outside India? There is a number that makes India’s startup story look much bigger than its borders: 205. That is the number of current and former unicorns outside India that have at least one founder who grew up in India, according to the new Indian Diaspora Index from Prosus and Dealroom. The companies collectively represent about $560 billion in founder-share-attributed company value. The list includes technology companies such as Zscaler, Rubrik, Nutanix, Palo Alto Networks, Astera Labs, Perplexity and others. But the statistic needs to be read carefully. The $560 billion is not the total value of the 205 companies. It is not the personal wealth of Indian-origin founders. And it is not money that has left India. Dealroom divides each company’s value equally among its founders and counts the portions belonging to qualifying founders

Culture Across Borders: How Indian Communities Keep Traditions A child growing up in Leicester may learn Bharatanatyam in a studio after school. A family in western Sydney may organise its calendar around a Tamil temple festival. In Southall, a young Sikh student may spend part of the weekend learning to read Gurmukhi. These are not simply cultural activities placed on top of everyday life. They are ways of passing knowledge from one generation to the next—often in countries where the language of school, work and friendship is not the language of grandparents. For Indian-origin communities abroad, cultural continuity is rarely automatic. It takes teachers, volunteers, rented halls, rehearsals, fundraising, family commitment and, increasingly, digital tools. The work is often done outside paid hours, between school runs and weekend shifts. Heritage, it turns out, has a timetable—and someone has to book the room. The Indian diaspora is frequently described as a community of tens of millions. India’s diaspora population is estimated at around 35 million in a 2026 NITI Aayog document, while UN data separately tracks international migrants by country of origin. These figures are not interchangeable: “diaspora” can include people of Indian origin who are citizens of other countries, while

From Yoga to Ayurveda: How India’s Ancient Wellness Traditions Became a Global Conversation Yoga is now practised across continents, while Ayurveda has moved from Indian households and specialist centres into the international wellness economy. The bigger question is whether India can turn that cultural reach into credible, evidence-based global influence. India’s influence on the world is increasingly visible in places that have little to do with Bollywood, cricket or information technology. It can be seen in a yoga class in New York, an Ayurveda centre in Europe, meditation programmes in universities, Indian-inspired wellness retreats in Southeast Asia and growing international interest in plant-based and traditional approaches to health. What began as ancient Indian knowledge systems has become part of a much larger global conversation about well-being, prevention, healthy ageing and holistic health. But there is an important distinction between cultural popularity and medical credibility. India’s next challenge is not simply to persuade more people around the world to practise yoga or buy Ayurvedic products. It is to ensure that the international growth of these traditions is accompanied by standards, evidence, qualified practitioners, consumer protection and respect for the knowledge from which they originated. That is where India’s cultural diplomacy story

BharatGen: How India Is Building AI That Speaks to Its Diaspora India’s BharatGen is moving beyond the idea of a single home-grown chatbot. With multilingual foundation models, speech, document intelligence and India-specific datasets, the government-supported initiative is attempting to build an AI layer that understands the country’s languages and social context — with potential implications far beyond India’s borders. Artificial intelligence is becoming global. The data, however, is not equally global. Many of the world’s most powerful AI systems were developed primarily around languages, datasets and cultural contexts in which English dominates. That does not make them incapable of serving Indian users, but it can leave important gaps when the task involves India’s many languages, scripts, administrative documents, cultural references and local knowledge systems. That is the problem BharatGen is attempting to address. Led by IIT Bombay through the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), with support from India’s Department of Science and Technology and the IndiaAI Mission, BharatGen has developed a family of sovereign, multilingual and multimodal AI models. The initiative was launched in June 2025 and is now part of India’s wider push to develop domestic foundational AI capabilities. For Indians living overseas, however, BharatGen is more

India’s 5G Equipment Makers Want to Go Global. Can They Compete with the World’s Telecom Giants? Tejas Networks, HFCL and Dixon Technologies…

India’s Spice Power: How Masala Became a Global Export Business From chilli and cumin to turmeric, cardamom, curry powders and spice oils, India remains the world’s leading spice-exporting nation. But the next chapter is not simply about shipping more spices—it is about proving that Indian spices can consistently meet the increasingly demanding standards of global consumers. There are few Indian products that need no introduction anywhere in the world. Spices are one of them. You can travel thousands of kilometres from India and still find turmeric in a supermarket, cumin in a restaurant kitchen, chilli on a food label and curry powder on a shelf. India’s relationship with spices is ancient. Its modern spice-export business, however, is increasingly sophisticated. According to the Spices Board of India, the country exported 17.34 lakh tonnes—about 1.734 million tonnes—of spices and spice products in FY2025–26, worth approximately $4.43 billion. That was lower than the previous year’s 1.799 million tonnes and $4.72 billion, but India retained its position as a leading global exporter. So the story in 2026 is not simply India exports lots of spices. It is: India has built a global spice industry—and now quality, traceability and value addition are becoming just as

India’s New Battlefield: When Drones, Satellites and AI Start Working as One For centuries, military power was largely measured in familiar things. How many soldiers? How many tanks? How many fighter aircraft? How many ships? Those numbers still matter. But another question is becoming increasingly important: How quickly can a military see, understand and respond to what is happening around it? That is where India’s defence transformation is becoming particularly interesting. India is building an increasingly networked military architecture involving drones, satellites, sensors, artificial intelligence, electronic systems and increasingly autonomous platforms. The objective is not simply to replace soldiers with machines. It is to make the machines, sensors and people work together faster and more intelligently. That is a very different proposition. The drone is becoming a military sensor—and sometimes a weapon The most visible change is in unmanned systems. India’s armed forces are acquiring and developing drones for surveillance, reconnaissance, targeting and increasingly for precision strike. The 2024 contract for 31 MQ-9B Sky/Sea Guardian HALE remotely piloted aircraft represented a major step in this direction. The fleet includes 16 Sky Guardians and 15 Sea Guardians for the tri-services. And India’s maritime requirements are becoming even more apparent. In August

From Buyer to Supplier: How India Is Building a Global Defence Export Industry India’s defence story is changing — and the interesting part is no longer only what the country buys, but what the world is beginning to buy from India. For decades, India was better known as one of the world’s major defence importers. Today, a different picture is emerging. In financial year 2025–26, India’s defence exports reached a record ₹38,424 crore, up from ₹23,622 crore a year earlier — a rise of 62.66%. At the same time, domestic defence production reached an all-time high of ₹1.78 lakh crore. Indian defence products are now being exported to more than 80 countries, according to the Ministry of Defence. That does not mean India has suddenly become a global military superpower in manufacturing. But it does mean something important has changed: India is increasingly becoming part of the international defence supply chain — as a manufacturer, supplier, technology partner and exporter. And that may ultimately be more significant than a single missile sale. What is India actually exporting? The popular image of defence exports is a missile leaving a launcher and heading towards some distant horizon. The reality is much larger