From Narayana Murthy to Europe's innovation chiefs: the voices shaping Bharat Innovates 2026

When Bharat Innovates 2026 opens in Nice, France, on 14 June 2026, the speaker roster will be as closely watched as the startups on the floor. Infosys founder N. R. Narayana Murthy will deliver the opening keynote at the event, an initiative of the Ministry of Education that brings 120 Indian deep-tech startups before a global audience. The line-up draws leaders from government, industry, academia, investment and research who are helping connect India's deep-tech ecosystem with global markets and partnerships.

The choice of speakers reflects the event's core ambition: putting Indian founders in the same room as the people who control capital, market access and research infrastructure across Europe and beyond. The inaugural session itself will be held in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron, underlining how high the event sits on the bilateral agenda during the India-France Year of Innovation.

The Indian contingent: founders, policymakers and IIT directors

The Infosys connection runs deep through the programme. Alongside Narayana Murthy's keynote, co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan will moderate a panel on building a corridor for trusted, inclusive and scalable AI, featuring Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Peak XV Partners, Sandeep Bakshi, Head of Europe at Prosus, and Henri Verdier, Head of the INRIA Foundation.

Government and policy voices include Dr Ajay Sood, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, Dr Deepak Bagla, Mission Director of the Atal Innovation Mission, and Manoj Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director of SIDBI. Indian academia arrives in strength, with the directors of IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Jammu and IISc Bangalore all on the speaker list. Startup founders also feature, including Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO and PRISM, and Akis Evangelidis, Co-Founder of UK-based Nothing.

The investor bench is equally deep. Karthik Reddy, Co-Founder and Partner at Blume Ventures, Prashanth Prakash, Founding Partner at Accel India, Anant Vidur Puri, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Gaurav Deepak, CEO of Avendus Capital, and Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director of Bertelsmann India Investments, will all be in Nice, alongside global counterparts such as Carsten Coesfeld, CEO of Bertelsmann Investments, Fabricio Bloisi, CEO of Prosus and Naspers, and Yoko Fukata, Head of India at the Sony Innovation Fund.

Europe shows up with industrial heavyweights

The European presence signals serious intent. Michiel Scheffer, President of the European Innovation Council, joins the speaker list, and he is flanked by senior leaders from France's aerospace and industrial establishment, including Aurelie Girou, CEO of Safran Reosc, Bertrand Denis, Vice President for Observation, Science and Exploration at Thales Alenia Space, Frederic Parisot, CEO of the French Aerospace Industries Association GIFAS, and Clementine Gallet, President of Coriolis Composites. European corporate R&D leadership is represented by Marie-Noelle Semeria, Senior Vice President of R&D at TotalEnergies, Dr Anne Hardy, Chief Innovation Officer at Saint-Gobain, and Dr Munib Amin, Managing Director at E.ON. From the scientific side, Prof Chetan Chitnis, Professor and Research Director at Institut Pasteur, brings one of Europe's most storied research institutions to the table.

Why does this speaker mix matter for Indian startups

Deep-tech companies face a different growth problem from consumer startups. Their products, whether satellites, semiconductors or gene therapies, need patient capital, regulatory navigation and industrial partners who can absorb hard technology into existing supply chains. A founder building a propulsion system gains more from an hour with Safran or Thales Alenia Space than from a hundred generic investor meetings.

That is the logic of this roster. By placing IIT directors next to the European Innovation Council, and Indian venture capitalists next to the corporate venture arms of Sony and Bertelsmann, the event compresses years of relationship-building into three days. Sessions such as India and Europe: DeepTech Without Borders and Global DeepTech Capital Corridors are built precisely around these intersections.

For the 120 startups in Nice, the speakers are not just names on a stage but potential customers, co-developers and lead investors. The conversations that follow these sessions, in roundtables, pitch rooms and gallery walks, will determine whether Bharat Innovates 2026 becomes a recurring fixture in the global innovation calendar and how quickly Indian deep tech finds its place in European industry.