FRANCE INSIDE: How French tech & capital power Indian innovations
FRANCE INSIDE : the best kept secret is out !
In 2026, India and France will celebrate the India-France Year of Innovation (IFYI), which will showcase Indian innovations and Indo-French cooperation in sustainability, design, cultural exchange.
I am working with the French Institute in India on an event on frugal innovation to be held in Spring 2026 in Bangalore as part of IFYI.
I want to use this post to highlight a less-known fact about Indo-French cooperation.
Way back in 2008, I published an article in leading French newspaper Les Echos arguing India and France must transcend their purely commercial (buy-sell) relationship.
Instead, I showed how India and France can build a strategic partnership by forming what I call Réseaux d’Innovation Franco-Indiennes, or Indo-French Innovation Networks (IFIN).
The Indo-French Innovation Networks (IFIN) would be a fluid and dynamic ecosystem connecting French and Indian talent, ideas, and capital to meet local and international demand.
Instead of rigid trade between “importers” and “exporters,” the IFIN involve a richer collaboration between 4 key actors:
- Inventors (government research orgs, academia, private R&D centers)
- Transformers (developers, manufacturers, distributors, IT delivery units)
- Financiers (banks, venture capitalists)
- Brokers (diplomats, non-resident Indians, media)
In this fluid model, French firms collaborating with their Indian partners would adopt the roles of inventor, transformer, broker, or financier, depending on their strategy and the project.
For instance, till now, the French defense firm Dassault Aviation merely “sold” its Rafale fighter jets to India and played both the roles of Inventor and Transformer: it designed and manufactured its jets all by itself in France.
But by partnering with Tata Advanced Systems (TAS), Dassault is willing to share its Transformer role with TAS which will produce the Rafale jet fuselages in India from 2028
Similarly, Capgemini’s Western consultants “transform” cutting-edge tech invented by their Indian colleagues into industry-specific solutions tailored to specific Western clients.
Recently, I gave a talk on frugal innovation at the French postal service La Poste’s HQ in Paris.
I learned its subsidiary Geopost (aka DPDgroup) invested in and owns 42% of Indian courier service DTDC.
Hence, Geopost plays the role of Financier in IFIN to fund and scale up valuable Indian services (I love DTDC for its reliability).
I wasn’t aware of DTDC-La Poste connection till Sébastien Lacombe, Geopost’s director of innovation told me.
I call it the FRANCE INSIDE phenomenon:
French tech, know-how, and capital already power well-known Indian products and services but many Indians (and French) are not aware of it !
In coming months, I will post other examples of FRANCE INSIDE that illustrate the power of Indo-French Innovation Networks (IFIN).
