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NEW DELHI: A hug, a handshake and a transportation worthy $1.5 billion. That was the texture of Sunday successful Nice, wherever Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron jointly threw unfastened ‘Bharat Innovates 2026’ — and where, hours earlier, Modi had softly worked a country afloat of radical who constitute the cheques.
The connection to investors was unambiguous: India is open, and it’s selling solutions, not buying them.Before the cameras rolled astatine the conclave, the PM sat down with planetary task capitalists and Indian entrepreneurs — OYO’s Ritesh Agarwal, Ronnie Screwvala and a clutch of planetary investors among them. Commerce curate Piyush Goyal and main technological advisor Ajay Kumar Sood were successful the room. “India has emerged not arsenic a user of solutions but arsenic a contributor to solutions successful the world.
Innovation is successful India’s DNA,” Modi told the gathering, adding that the state was “innovating for a sustainable future; India is innovating for the world”.The numbers gave the rhetoric teeth. The three-day lawsuit (June 14-16) has brought unneurotic 120 deep-tech startups — culled from implicit 3,000 applicants — collectively sitting connected 1,500-plus patents and $1.5 cardinal successful raised capital, alongside 15 higher acquisition institutions, the premier IITs included, and much than 500 investors and planetary CEOs.
Organisers accidental astir $20 cardinal successful caller commitments has already been finalised oregon is adjacent to being finalised.Macron, connected his part, said, “India is simply a state of innovation. India, France person a existent concern successful captious sectors similar AI and clime change.” He nudged the narration into caller territory, saying determination was “scope to grow bilateral practice successful civilian atomic energy, including successful the country of Small Modular Reactor”.PM Modi said, “Different countries commercialized with each different and onslaught strategical partnerships. But determination are fewer relations driven by shared vision, too shared interests. India-France is 1 specified relationship,” listing “connection, conviction, innovation, inspiration and shared vision” arsenic its load-bearing pillars.The Nice limb besides marks the archetypal acme betwixt the 2 leaders since the ties were elevated to a ‘Special Global Strategic Partnership’ successful Feb. Modi volition adjacent spell to Slovakia and volition beryllium backmost for the G7 Summit astatine Evian, earlier closing retired astatine VivaTech successful Paris — wherever India volition enactment up the show’s largest nationalist pavilion.
