From New York to 900+ Centres: How ISKCON Took Krishna Consciousness Around the World In 1965, a 70-year-old Indian spiritual teacher arrived in New York carrying little more than books, a message and a determination to introduce the teachings of Krishna to people who knew very little about them. Six decades later, the organisation he founded has a presence that stretches across continents. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), popularly known as the Hare Krishna movement, marks its 60th anniversary in 2026. Its official website currently lists 900+ centres worldwide, alongside thousands of festivals and more than 110 vegetarian restaurants associated with its global activities. That makes ISKCON’s story one of the more remarkable examples of an Indian spiritual tradition developing a sustained international presence. And the story begins in an unlikely place. From a small New York storefront to a worldwide movement When A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada arrived in New York in 1965, the city was hardly an obvious launchpad for a movement rooted in Vaishnava devotional traditions. Yet New York became the starting point. ISKCON was formally established in 1966, and its early activities centred on chanting, devotional practice, spiritual discussion and the distribution of Srila Prabhupada’s

Does India Really Need Billions of Dollars of AI Compute to Become a Superpower? India wants to become a major artificial-intelligence power. But there is a difficult question behind that ambition: does a country need to own enormous amounts of computing infrastructure to be a genuine AI superpower? The answer is not as simple as “yes.” Frontier AI requires extraordinary amounts of computing power. Training and operating the most capable models involves advanced processors, large data centres, enormous electricity requirements and sophisticated networking infrastructure. Countries and companies controlling these resources therefore possess an important strategic advantage. But AI is much larger than frontier-model training. India’s opportunity may lie not only in building enormous computing clusters, but also in deciding where sovereign infrastructure is essential, where collaboration is sensible and where Indian companies can create global value without owning every layer of the technology stack. That distinction could determine India’s AI strategy over the next decade. The compute problem is real Artificial intelligence ultimately runs on physical infrastructure. Behind every large language model are semiconductor accelerators, servers, networking equipment, cooling systems, electricity and data-centre capacity. The most advanced AI systems require huge computational resources. Access to cutting-edge chips has also become

Why Tiny Minerals Matter to Big Technology Oil once defined the vocabulary of strategic resources. Today, some of the most consequential materials in the global economy are far less glamorous. They can fit into a laboratory container, appear as obscure entries on a periodic table and rarely make the evening news. Yet gallium and germanium sit inside technologies that increasingly define economic and national security — from semiconductors and optical communications to defence electronics, infrared systems and advanced energy technologies. For India, their importance is growing at precisely the moment the country is trying to build semiconductor manufacturing, expand high-technology production and strengthen domestic defence capabilities. The uncomfortable question is therefore not simply whether India has enough minerals. It is whether India can build a reliable supply chain from mineral resources to refined material to finished technology. Why gallium and germanium matter India’s Ministry of Mines included both gallium and germanium in its official list of 30 critical minerals released in 2023. The classification reflects their importance to strategic industries and the risks associated with concentrated supply chains. Gallium is particularly important for compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN). These materials have applications in high-frequency

If Washington and Beijing Make Peace on Trade, What Happens to India’s China+1 Opportunity? For several years, one of the most repeated phrases in global manufacturing has been “China+1.” The idea is simple: companies that have traditionally depended heavily on China add another manufacturing location — and India, Vietnam, Mexico and several other economies have competed for that additional role. But what happens if the world’s two largest economies decide to make their relationship somewhat less confrontational? That question has suddenly become more relevant. Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting the United States from September 23 to 25, at the invitation of US President Donald Trump, with the two leaders expected to discuss trade and broader strategic issues. Current reporting points to negotiations involving tariffs, critical minerals, technology and artificial intelligence. The answer for India is not simply “good” or “bad.” A US-China thaw could reduce one of the immediate incentives for companies to diversify away from China. But it would not automatically erase the longer-term reasons businesses have been building additional supply-chain capacity outside China. For India, that distinction could become crucial. The first part of the China+1 story was tariffs US tariffs have been a powerful reason for

Why Europe’s Biggest Market Opportunity Could Change the Way India Does Business There are trade agreements, and then there are trade agreements that make exporters start checking their calculators twice. The India–European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) belongs to the second category. On January 27, 2026, India and the European Union announced the conclusion of negotiations for their long-awaited FTA at the 16th India–EU Summit in New Delhi. It followed years of negotiations and the formal relaunch of talks in 2022. But there is an important distinction: the negotiations have been concluded; the agreement has not yet entered into force. Legal revision, approvals, signing and the respective internal procedures still have to be completed. The Indian government says the FTA will enter into force after India and the EU exchange written notifications confirming completion of their internal legal procedures, unless they mutually agree another date. That distinction may sound like legal paperwork. For Indian exporters, however, it is the difference between “opportunity coming” and “opportunity available.” A market of roughly 2 billion people The scale is difficult to ignore. India and the EU together represent a market of around 2 billion people, approximately one-quarter of global GDP, and around one-third

From Workers to World Leaders There was a time when the story of Indians going abroad was largely told through airports: a suitcase, a passport, a job offer and a family waving goodbye. Today, that story looks very different. An Indian abroad may be a software engineer in Silicon Valley, a doctor in London, an entrepreneur in Dubai, an academic in Australia, a construction worker in the Gulf—or the person sitting in the corner office of one of the world’s biggest technology companies. India’s global presence is no longer simply about migration. It is about skills, businesses, money, ideas, culture and leadership moving across borders. According to data from India’s Ministry of External Affairs, approximately 35.42 million overseas Indians were recorded as of May 2024, including about 15.85 million non-resident Indians and 19.57 million people of Indian origin. The community stretches across more than 200 countries and territories. That number is large enough to create a small thought experiment: if the overseas Indian community were a country, it would be one of the world’s larger populations. But numbers alone do not explain its significance. From migration to leadership One of the most visible changes has happened in corporate leadership. Satya

Beyond India’s Borders: How Global Tenders Can Open New Markets for Indian Businesses For a small Indian manufacturer, service provider or exporter, entering an overseas market can appear to require enormous resources: finding buyers, understanding foreign procurement systems, establishing credibility and competing with companies already familiar with the market. But there is another route to international business that is often less visible to the general public: global public and private tenders. The Indian Trade Portal’s Global Tender Service is designed around this opportunity. According to the portal, its service brings international tender opportunities to Indian exporters across more than 100 countries and 25 business sectors. The platform also maintains past tenders, allowing businesses to examine previous opportunities and understand markets. The idea is straightforward: instead of waiting for an overseas buyer to discover an Indian company, an Indian business can actively look for procurement opportunities in international markets. A different way to think about exports Export growth is often associated with large corporations, established brands and major manufacturing groups. Global tenders present a different possibility. The Indian Trade Portal specifically identifies MSMEs, Indian manufacturers and service companies among the businesses that can benefit from its Global Tender Service. The objective

India’s artificial-intelligence story is entering a more consequential phase. The question is no longer simply whether Indian companies can build AI products for the Indian market. The bigger question is whether those products can travel—across languages, industries, regulatory environments and national borders. A new partnership between CoRover.ai and Tech Mahindra is attempting to answer that question. Announced on September 22, the collaboration aims to combine CoRover’s BharatGPT with Tech Mahindra’s Project Indus and TechM Orion to develop AI solutions for enterprise, government and societal applications, with an explicit ambition to take India-origin capabilities into international markets. That makes the partnership interesting for a reason beyond the two company names. It represents an emerging Indian model of AI development: combine locally relevant language and AI capabilities with large-scale engineering, implementation and international distribution. The hard part, of course, begins after the press release. Three AI Platforms, One Larger Ambition The partnership brings together three different technology components. CoRover’s BharatGPT is positioned as a multilingual generative and conversational AI platform designed around Indian users and use cases. CoRover says BharatGPT supports more than 14 Indian languages through voice and is available across voice, video and text. The company also describes deployments across

India’s Global Acquisition Drive: Why Indian Companies Are Buying Abroad Indian companies are increasingly looking beyond India’s borders—not simply to sell more products, but to secure the assets, capabilities and supply chains that may determine who remains competitive in the next decade. That shift is becoming visible in India’s overseas mergers and acquisitions. According to JPMorgan data cited by Reuters, Indian outbound M&A has already reached nearly $24 billion in 2026, putting the year on track for a record. JPMorgan says geopolitical volatility and the strategic importance of resources such as critical minerals are encouraging Indian companies to look overseas. The interesting part is not merely the size of the cheque. It is what Indian companies are trying to buy. India Is Buying More Than Companies Traditional overseas acquisitions usually had a straightforward logic. Buy a foreign company to enter a market. Acquire a brand. Obtain technology. Gain customers. Expand distribution. Those motivations remain. But the global business environment has changed. Pandemic-era disruptions, wars, export restrictions, sanctions and competition over critical minerals have demonstrated that supply chains can become strategic vulnerabilities. A factory may be perfectly efficient until its raw material stops arriving. A battery manufacturer may have excellent technology

India’s 7.8% Growth Story: —and Why the Number Alone Is Not Enough At a time when the global economy is dealing with geopolitical tensions, expensive energy, disrupted supply chains and uncertain trade conditions, India has produced a number that naturally attracts attention: 7.8%. That is India’s real GDP growth in the first quarter of financial year 2026–27, covering April to June 2026. According to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, real GDP was estimated at ₹81.36 lakh crore in the quarter, compared with ₹75.46 lakh crore a year earlier. Real Gross Value Added grew even faster, at 8.2%. The number is significant. But the more important question is not simply how fast India is growing. It is what is driving that growth—and whether it can continue. From a 7.4% outlook to 7.8% reality Earlier this year, APCO Worldwide’s India Outlook 2026 described India as one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies and projected growth of around 7.4% for 2026. Its analysis pointed to domestic demand, infrastructure investment, digital transformation, reforms and India’s growing international economic role. The actual first-quarter number has now come in higher. That does not mean the APCO forecast was “wrong” in any dramatic sense. A

UPI at 10: How India’s Digital Payment Revolution Became a Global Technology Story There was a time when paying for a cup of tea in India could involve searching for change, asking whether the shopkeeper had ₹10, and occasionally beginning a philosophical discussion about who had the correct amount. Then came UPI. Today, a customer can scan a QR code, enter a PIN and transfer money directly from a bank account in seconds. What began as a relatively modest digital-payment experiment has become one of India’s most important pieces of digital public infrastructure—and increasingly, a technology that India is taking beyond its own borders. In 2026, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) completed a decade of operation. The numbers behind that decade are extraordinary: annual UPI transaction volume reached 24,162 crore transactions in FY2025–26, while annual transaction value reached about ₹314 lakh crore. By July 2026, 741 banks were live on the platform. And July itself produced a record: 2,366 crore transactions in a single month, worth about ₹29.88 lakh crore. That is no longer merely a payment app story. It is a technology story. What exactly is UPI? UPI was developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) under

Indian Businesses in the UAE There was a time when the Indian presence in the UAE was discussed mainly in terms of workers, remittances and the millions of Indians building careers across the Gulf. That story is now incomplete. In 2026, another Indian presence is becoming impossible to ignore: Indian businesses. By the end of March 2026, 84,088 Indian companies were registered as active members of the Dubai Chamber of Commerce, after 3,995 new Indian companies joined during the first quarter alone. Indian companies represented the largest foreign business community among Dubai Chamber’s members. That number is not simply an immigration statistic. It is a business statistic. And it says something important about how the India–UAE economic relationship is changing. Dubai is becoming more than a place to sell to For many Indian entrepreneurs, the UAE is no longer just an export market. It is becoming a regional operating base. Dubai’s location provides access not only to the Gulf but also to markets across the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe and Asia. That makes the UAE particularly attractive for companies that want to internationalise without immediately establishing offices in multiple countries. The strategy can be relatively simple: Build