"When Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron walked onto the stage at the Palais des Expositions on 14 June 2026 to inaugurate Bharat Innovates — 120 Indian deep-tech start-ups, 15 universities, over 500 investors and global CEOs — they were inaugurating the visible face of a relationship that, over two decades, has moved from arms sales to technology transfer, from technology transfer to co-development, and from co-development to what both leaders now call a sovereign alliance. The startups on display in Nice and the fighter-jet engines being discussed in the same week are products of the same underlying decision."
On Sunday, 14 June 2026, at the Palais des Expositions in Nice, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Emmanuel Macron stood together to inaugurate Bharat Innovates 2026 — an event that, on the surface, looked like a trade show. One hundred and twenty Indian deep-tech start-ups. Fifteen leading higher education institutions. More than 500 investors, venture capitalists and global chief executives. Sectors ranging from semiconductors to space technology to biotechnology. By any conventional measure, this was an impressive showcase of India's innovation economy on a European stage. But the location and the timing tell a different and more important story.
PM Modi arrived in Nice fresh from bilateral talks with Mr Macron on 13 and 14 June, covering defence, civil nuclear energy, critical technologies, innovation, and mobility. French diplomatic sources in New Delhi have confirmed that Paris is comfortable with sharing technology for the proposed Rafale fighter jet deal, and that the integration of Indian-made weapons is part of the package under discussion. A French diplomatic source explicitly stated that France does not view its defence relationship with India through a customer-provider lens. Bharat Innovates was not happening alongside this defence conversation by coincidence. It was happening because of it.
The startups on display in Nice and the fighter-jet engines being discussed in the same bilateral talks are products of the same underlying relationship — one that India has spent two decades building, precisely because it does not look like every other relationship India has with a Western power.
To understand why Nice matters, it helps to go back to a fact that gets mentioned often but rarely examined for what it actually means. Unlike several Western nations that imposed sanctions following India's nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998, France maintained engagement with New Delhi and continued strategic cooperation.
That single decision, made by Paris at moments when India was diplomatically isolated by most of the Western world, created something that does not show up in trade statistics but shows up in everything that has happened since. It created trust at the level of strategic decision-making — the kind of trust that determines whether a country will share its most sensitive technology or merely sell its finished products. President Macron has described the relationship as a sovereign alliance, one in which the two nations have chosen each other on land, at sea, and in the sky.
From a first principles perspective, this is the foundation that makes everything else in this story possible. Technology transfer is not a commercial favour. It is an act of strategic vulnerability, because the country giving up the technology is giving up some measure of control over how it gets used. Countries only do this for partners they have tested over decades and found reliable, especially during the moments when reliability was costly. France passed that test when it mattered most. Everything happening in Nice this week is the compounding interest on that decision.
The Rafale fighter jet has become shorthand in Indian defence commentary for a straightforward arms purchase. That framing misses what is actually happening. On 28 April 2025, India and France signed an Inter-Governmental Agreement for the procurement of 26 Rafale-M aircraft for the Indian Navy. The agreement includes transfer of technology and integration of indigenous weapons systems in line with India's Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative.
Plans have also moved forward for the procurement of 114 new multi-role combat aircraft for the Indian Air Force, with talks including domestic manufacturing. French engine maker Safran will work with Indian partners to produce fighter aircraft engines within India — a move expected to strengthen domestic capability in high-end propulsion technology.
Engine technology is the single most jealously guarded category of military technology in the world. A country that can build an airframe but not the engine that powers it remains permanently dependent on whoever supplies that engine. The collapse of the Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme has opened discussions on possible India-France collaboration on sixth-generation fighter aircraft, with cooperation now spanning fighter jet engines, artificial intelligence, drones, advanced propulsion systems, cybersecurity, quantum technologies, and space applications. India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and France's Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) have signed a technical agreement to deepen cooperation in defence research.
What emerges from this is not India buying France's old technology. It is India and France jointly building the next generation of technology that neither could build alone at the pace either wants.
While the Rafale dominates headlines, the submarine story running in parallel reveals just as much about how this partnership actually functions. The P-75 Scorpene submarine project reached a major milestone with the sixth submarine commissioned into the Indian Navy in January 2025. French sources have confirmed that the bilateral meetings between PM Modi and Mr Macron included discussions on India's pending order for three additional Scorpene submarines. France's Naval Group has already delivered six Scorpene submarines, commissioned into the Indian Navy as the Kalvari class. The Indian Navy currently operates 16 conventional submarines.
The original contract for six Scorpene submarines from France's DCNS was signed in October 2006, with all six built under technology transfer at Mazagaon Docks Limited in Mumbai. That detail — built under technology transfer at an Indian shipyard — is the entire story in miniature. The interconnectedness this represents spans two decades: a 2006 contract that trained an Indian workforce, built Indian industrial capacity, and produced six operational submarines by 2025, now potentially extending into three more submarines built on the same foundation. Every submarine built at Mazagaon Docks under this programme leaves behind not just a vessel but a workforce, a supply chain, and an institutional memory that the next contract builds on. This is what makes the Scorpene programme different from a simple purchase order. It is infrastructure that compounds.
This brings us back to Nice, and to the question of why a deep-tech start-up showcase was sharing a stage with two heads of state during a week dominated by defence and nuclear energy talks. The 2026 summit deepened cooperation under the Make in India initiative, which promoted the co-production of Rafale aircraft, helicopters, and missile systems in India. The Year of Innovation was launched by both countries to deepen cooperation in technologies, with key areas including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, cybersecurity, digital infrastructure, and space technology. The two leaders elevated bilateral ties to a Special Global Strategic Partnership on 17 February 2026 in Mumbai, signalling a structured expansion of cooperation across defence, advanced technologies, and other strategic sectors.
The leverage point is this: the 120 start-ups presenting at Bharat Innovates are not a separate track from the defence conversation. They are the pipeline for it. Safran has inaugurated a major aircraft engine MRO facility near Hyderabad — India's first deep-level engine MRO centre set up by a global OEM, expected to service up to 300 LEAP engines annually. Safran has also entered a joint venture with Bharat Electronics Limited to manufacture the HAMMER air-to-surface weapon in India. Memorandums of Understanding have been signed on the production of HAMMER missiles in India alongside the renewal of a 10-year defence cooperation agreement.
Every one of these facilities, joint ventures, and production lines needs a domestic supplier base of precision components, software, materials science, and systems integration capability. That supplier base is exactly what India's deep-tech start-up ecosystem is building. A start-up in Bengaluru working on advanced semiconductor design or a research institution working on next-generation materials is not competing with the Rafale programme for attention in Nice. It is potential supply chain for it. Officers from the armed forces of both nations will begin cross-deployment postings from 2026, building operational familiarity and strengthening institutional understanding between the services. The human relationships being built through military exchange and the industrial relationships being built through start-up showcases are two layers of the same structure.
India is increasingly seeking technology transfer, co-development, and domestic production capabilities, and France has shown a greater willingness than many partners to engage in these areas. This sentence captures something India's strategic community has been working toward for two decades and that is now visibly materialising. The Indian approach to defence partnerships has always rested on a simple principle: relationships that deepen India's dependence on a foreign supplier are acceptable only as a bridge to relationships that build India's own capability. France, more than perhaps any other major defence supplier, has been willing to be that bridge rather than treat the relationship as a permanent customer arrangement.
PM Modi told French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in an earlier era of this relationship that the significance of the India-France Strategic Partnership was not limited to the bilateral context, but acted as a force for peace and stability in the regional and global context as well. That framing has only become more accurate with time.
An India that builds fighter jet engines, submarines, and precision missiles domestically — with French technology transferred rather than merely French products purchased — is an India that can project stability in the Indo-Pacific without depending on any single power's continued goodwill. That is precisely the kind of strategic autonomy that both countries have separately identified as central to their worldviews: India's non-alignment tradition updated for a multipolar century, and France's long-standing insistence on European and French strategic independence from any single bloc.
When PM Modi and Mr Macron walked onto the stage at the Palais des Expositions on 14 June, they inaugurated an event whose official purpose was showcasing Indian innovation to French and global investors. Its actual significance is broader. It is the visible face of a relationship that has, over two decades, moved from arms sales to technology transfer, from technology transfer to co-development, and from co-development to what both leaders now call a sovereign alliance.
The submarines being discussed in the same week were laid down at an Indian shipyard under a 2006 agreement. The fighter jet engines being discussed will be built at Indian facilities under agreements being finalised this week. The start-ups being showcased in Nice are the next generation of Indian companies that will, within a decade, be supplying components, software, and systems to programmes that do not exist yet.
The two leaders inaugurated the India-France Year of Innovation in Mumbai in February 2026, reinforcing their focus on research, innovation, and technology collaboration as the connecting thread across every other part of this relationship.
France chose to stand with India when standing with India was diplomatically costly. India chose France as the partner through which to build the industrial and technological base that strategic autonomy requires. Bharat Innovates in Nice was not a separate event happening alongside that history. It is that history's next chapter — written in the language of start-ups and venture capital rather than submarines and fighter jets, but telling exactly the same story: two countries that decided, decades ago, to build something together rather than simply trade with each other, and are now watching that decision compound into one of the most consequential technology partnerships either country has.
Dr Sudhanshu Kumar is a Subject Matter Expert on Artificial Intelligence, Cyberwarfare and Cybersecurity at CENJOWS — the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, an autonomous think tank under Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), Ministry of Defence, Government of India. He holds a PhD on "AI and Security Policy" from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at MGIMO (Moscow State Institute of International Relations), Moscow. His scholarly work focuses on artificial intelligence, cyberspace, security policy, and the philosophy of technology.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of CENJOWS, the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, the Ministry of Defence, or the Government of India.