Thirty-seven Indian deep-tech startups spent the opening days of the BRICS summit pitching to an audience they would otherwise need years of roadshows to assemble. The Ministry of Education is running the BRICS Bharat Innovates Exposition at Bharat Mandapam on 11 and 12 September, timed to sit inside the same building as the Business Forum and the leaders’ sessions that follow.
The stated objectives are investment discussions, technology partnerships, business linkages and international market access — in that order, which is itself informative. The expo is not primarily a funding event. It is an attempt to shorten the distance between Indian deep-tech and buyers in ten other member economies.
Startup numbers
India brings scale to the argument. Narendra Modi told the Business Forum that the country now counts more than 200,000 startups and over 120 unicorns, working across artificial intelligence, green hydrogen, defence, space and healthcare. "Our startups and AI are enhancing the industries of healthcare and education," he said.
Deep-tech is the harder subset of that number. Hardware, materials, space systems and biotech carry development cycles that outlast most venture funds’ patience and require a first customer with a procurement budget rather than a growth-stage cheque. For that kind of company, a room containing sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf, Chinese industrial buyers and Brazilian and African market entrants is worth more than a demo day.
India has also pressed the bloc to widen who gets counted in its economic work, arguing for greater engagement of startups, MSMEs and women entrepreneurs — constituencies that rarely appear in BRICS communiqués, which historically have been written around states, development banks and large enterprise.
The surrounding agenda gives the expo something to plug into. Leaders are discussing resilient supply chains, cross-border payments, national-currency settlement, digital trade and MSME development across Friday and Saturday. Every one of those, if it moves, changes the cost of a small Indian company selling into Brazil or Indonesia.
The exposition is one piece of a chairship India has run deliberately wide. More than 350 BRICS-related meetings were held across 25-plus Indian cities through the year, spanning academic, youth, business and cultural programmes under a participation framing New Delhi calls Jan Bhagidari.
What none of it guarantees is a deal. Expos generate meetings; procurement generates revenue. The measure of this one will not be visible at Bharat Mandapam this week — it will show up, or fail to, in the order books of thirty-seven companies over the next two years.
