The UK and India have agreed to explore a partnership between Russell Group universities and India’s Technology Innovation Hubs, according to the joint statement of the 8th UK-India Science and Innovation Council, published by the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade on 12 October 2026. The council met in New Delhi. The proposed Russell Group tie-up is one of two university-facing commitments in the statement.
It was co-chaired by Dr Jitendra Singh, India’s Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, and Jonathan Reynolds MP, the UK Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. The two ministers also agreed to explore a partnership with India’s Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to link research and technology translation with investment and scale-up, and agreed to raise the council’s status to match what they called their increased ambition. The statement does not say what the higher status involves.
Our objective is to connect the UK and India’s research systems more closely and turn more joint research into technologies, products and businesses.
Joint statement of Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, and Jonathan Reynolds MP, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
What was agreed
The statement says UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Government of India have jointly invested more than £450 million since 2008, supporting over 290 projects and 1,665 publications, and that joint publications have increased by 238% since 2013 and are cited 120% above the global average.
Alongside the two partnerships to be explored, the ministers:
- launched a UK-India Technology Translation Partnership with the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, connecting UK Catapults with India’s Science and Technology Clusters;
- announced an InnoXchange Programme connecting start-ups, incubators and accelerators;
- welcomed a Thematic Analysis for a UK-India Research and Innovation Corridor, which identified seven shared themes and five priority opportunities;
- welcomed the Phase 2 Implementation Agreement for the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source partnership, under which India’s Department of Science and Technology will invest a further £3 million over five years to expand access for Indian researchers and support early-career researchers.
Under the Technology Security Initiative, they also welcomed a Genomic Centre of Excellence between Oxford Nanopore Technologies India and India’s Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, and a biomanufacturing partnership between the UK’s Centre for Process Innovation and India’s Biotechnology Research and Innovation Council.
What a Russell Group tie-up would connect
The Russell Group is an association of 24 research-intensive universities whose members include the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and UCL, according to the group’s membership list. Its members span England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, from the University of Edinburgh and Cardiff University to Queen’s University Belfast.
India’s Technology Innovation Hubs sit under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems, which the Department of Science and Technology began in December 2018 with a sanctioned budget of ₹3,660 crore, according to the government’s India Science, Technology and Innovation portal. The mission runs 25 hubs hosted at academic and research institutions across the country, each focused on a single technology domain such as artificial intelligence, robotics, sensors, blockchain or quantum technologies. Each hub works as the centre of a hub-and-spoke network that links academia, industry, government bodies and start-ups.
A Russell Group tie-up would therefore pair a self-selecting club of UK research universities with a mission-funded Indian network built for turning research into usable technology. The joint statement does not say which universities or hubs would take part, or who would arrange the pairings.
ANRF, the newer partner
The Anusandhan National Research Foundation was established under the ANRF Act 2023 as an apex body for research, innovation and entrepreneurship. When the Union Cabinet approved the Bill’s introduction in June 2023, it put the foundation’s estimated cost at ₹50,000 crore over 2023 to 2028, according to a release from the Press Information Bureau. The Prime Minister is ex officio president of its governing board, the ministers for science and education serve as vice-presidents, and an executive council chaired by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India oversees its functioning. The Act also folded the Science and Engineering Research Board into the new foundation.
The foundation held the first meeting of its governing board on 10 September 2024, according to its website, and its remit runs across the natural sciences, engineering, health, agriculture, environmental and earth sciences, and the science-linked parts of the humanities and social sciences. Unlike the Russell Group tie-up, which concerns universities directly, the proposed ANRF partnership would join the two countries’ funding and translation machinery, with investment and scale-up named as the goal.
What is not yet decided
Both university-facing items are commitments to explore, not agreements. The statement does not name participating universities or hubs, and sets out no funding, governance or timetable for either the Russell Group or the ANRF partnership. It does not list the corridor analysis’s seven themes or five opportunities. Apart from India’s £3 million for ISIS, no new money is attached to the measures. Officials and delivery partners were tasked with taking the initiatives forward before the next council, for which no date was given.
The council met during a UK trade mission to India led by Reynolds. The department’s release on the mission said the University of Liverpool’s campus in Bengaluru had opened that week.
Russell Group members already building in India
Two of the group’s 24 members already run campuses in India. The University of Southampton opened its Delhi campus in Gurugram in July 2025 after becoming the first international institution granted a licence by the University Grants Commission to set up a campus under the National Education Policy 2020, according to the university’s announcement. Its first cohort of about 150 students began in August 2025 on courses including business management, accounting and finance, computer science and economics, and the university plans for up to 5,000 students a year by 2035. The campus runs in partnership with Oxford International Education Group.
The University of Liverpool followed with its Bengaluru campus, which the trade mission release says opened in the week of the council. A Russell Group tie-up with the Technology Innovation Hubs would add a research and translation channel to a presence in India that has so far been built around teaching.
What it means
TED analysis:
- For UK research-intensive universities: a Russell Group channel to India’s Technology Innovation Hubs would give members a government-backed route into India’s applied research network. Universities outside the Russell Group are not mentioned and would need to look to the ANRF track or the translation partnership.
- For Indian institutions and funders: a partnership with ANRF focused on translation and scale-up would sit alongside UKRI’s existing joint funding with the Government of India. Its scale will depend on money that has not yet been announced.
- For investors and technology transfer suppliers: the statement’s emphasis on Catapults, start-ups, incubators and scale-up points to demand for commercialisation services around joint research rather than for teaching partnerships.
