At BRICS Business Forum, PM Pitches India as Growth and Innovation Hub

Addressing the BRICS Business Forum 2026, the Prime Minister welcomed business leaders, innovators and delegates, noting that the grouping is marking twenty years since its founding in 2006 with four members. Today, BRICS and its partners together form a family of twenty-one countries, he said.

BRICS nations now represent fifty per cent of the world's population, forty per cent of global GDP and more than twenty-five per cent of world trade, the Prime Minister noted. While global GDP has grown roughly two-and-a-half times over these years, the combined GDP of BRICS countries has expanded about four-and-a-half times, meaning the bloc's economic strength has grown at nearly double the pace of the world economy.

He described BRICS countries as emerging centres of global innovation and solutions, with new possibilities taking shape from grassroots to frontier technologies. The Forum hosted in India is the largest BRICS Business Forum held so far, he added.

India's BRICS chairmanship theme is "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability". Over the past twelve years, India has made this mantra the basis of its economic and trade policy, the Prime Minister said. On resilience, he noted that India has diversified and made supply chains more reliable, from energy to technology, which has helped it offer growth and stability amid global uncertainties.

India is rapidly expanding roads, railways, ports and airports while building new capabilities in strategic sectors such as ship-building, semiconductors, quantum, critical minerals and bio-technology, he said. These areas are becoming centres of new opportunities for global businesses, he added, coining the pitch: "Make in India, Innovate with India, and Scale for the World."

Highlighting India's startup revolution, the Prime Minister said the country now has more than two lakh startups and over one hundred and twenty unicorns, making it a hub for global solutions. A glimpse of this will be visible at the "BRICS Bharat Innovates" expo, he said. Startups are transforming AI, education and healthcare, working on green hydrogen and batteries, and pushing new frontiers in defence and space, he added, urging that these world-class innovations be taken to global markets through BRICS.

A distinctive feature of India's innovation story is innovation at population scale, he said, citing the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has accelerated financial inclusion and digital transactions. Fifty per cent of the world's real-time payments now run on this technology, he noted, adding that an open ecosystem has been provided to industry and startups to build new solutions on this digital layer. Several countries are adopting this ecosystem, and BRICS innovators can use the experience to build solutions for their own nations, he said.

At a time when trade barriers are rising globally, India is building economic bridges, the Prime Minister said. Since 2014, India has signed free trade agreements with nearly forty countries. Within BRICS, India's approach is to reduce barriers and expand opportunities for businesses.

Under India's chairmanship, new cooperation networks have been formed in areas such as agriculture, health, skills and smart grids, he said. Initiatives such as the BRICS incubator network, the BRICS MSME portal and the BRICS Startup Innovation Fund have been launched to connect startups and small enterprises with markets and finance. He invited the business community to use these frameworks and boost investment and talent exchange among member countries.

Global trade can advance only when sea lanes are secure, supply routes remain open and seafarers are safe, the Prime Minister said, adding that India is a strong advocate of freedom of navigation and the safety of seafarers.

The BRICS Women's Business Alliance is an important part of this vision, he said, expressing the hope that women entrepreneurs will lead the growth story. Around two hundred women business leaders participated in the alliance's meeting held in India, he noted.

As BRICS enters its third decade, the Prime Minister asked the BRICS Business Council to consider preparing a report on removing the top ten trade barriers among member countries, supporting one hundred BRICS startups each year to scale in other BRICS markets, and developing a thousand new partnerships among businesses. Progress on these three parameters should be reviewed annually, he said.

Urging the gathering to turn BRICS ambition into action and collective strength into global solutions, he concluded: "BRICS should move forward, and take the world forward too."