Dharmendra Pradhan Calls to Institutionalise ‘Bharat Innovates’ Initiative
2 min readMar 22, 2026 10:06 PM IST
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday called for the need to convert Bharat Innovates, India’s platform to take innovations to market-product – into an institutional framework. This will help young innovators translate ideas into commercially-viable products, which according to Pradhan is crucial for growth of India’s research ecosystem.
Pradhan was addressing the concluding session of Bharat Innovates Deep-Tech Pre-Summit at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. “There is no dearth of research in India whether it is citation or publication. What we need is product development,” said Pradhan emphasising on the challenge in India’s research ecosystem which according to him lies in converting innovation into scalable products. He said, “This is not possible unless we work on everyday problem statements or anticipate future societal needs.”
Stating that India is growing in technology preparedness, Pradhan said, “India ranks among top five nations in deep-tech innovations. And has significantly improved its global innovation ranking from 81 in the year 2015 to 38 today.” But he insisted on breaking the silos in which research work is happening at academic institutions.
Director IIT Bombay, Prof. Shireesh Kedare highlighted the valley of death between early-stage research and product development. “And this is where incubators are required to provide the initial support to innovations. This ecosystem is evolving at IIT Bombay” said Kedare as he noted the need for collaboration with other academic institutions for stronger impact.
The pre-summit at IIT Bombay was precursor to the ‘Bharat Innovates 2026’ – an international showcase to be held at France in June as part of India-France Year of Innovation 2026, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The initiative aims to present India’s most promising deep-tech ventures to global investors.
