Aerial view of Howrah Bridge illuminated at dusk with surrounding cityscape and buildings in Kolkata, India.

reports

UK-India: Place-based partnerships for net zero

How the intelligent pairing of places can drive both net zero action and new market opportunities between the two nations.

June 6, 2023

Creating innovation partnerships between India and the United Kingdom has huge promise to accelerate decarbonisation. The careful curation of corridors for trade, technology pilots and commercialisation can provide a shape to the future two-way flow of business, ideas and capital between the two nations.

Strengthened international collaboration between cities and places presents a significant opportunity. The UK and India share world-class expertise in science and technology, bold business leadership, and ambitious cities seeking to drive action towards net zero. Both nations share an existing commitment to partnership on investment, technological collaboration and joint leadership on climate and clean energy.

Our report outlines the scale of potential and appetite for collaboration between UK-Indian cities, identifying high potential pairings of innovative places with complimentary challenges and ambitions for decarbonisation.

Innovation places are clusters of innovation activity; home to scientific expertise, cutting edge technology, capital and new ideas. These can be formalised as ‘quarters’ or ‘districts’, but in many cases can be the result of converging specialisms, services and markets collocating in a specific space.

Through deep-dive engagement between the Greater Manchester region and Bengaluru, we uncovered specific collaboration opportunities and a high level of appetite for partnerships between their innovation places.

Learning from this and our research, we designed a partnership model to outline how place-based partnerships can become both mutually beneficial and self-sustaining for city innovation ecosystems in future.