Why it matters: Italy is positioning India as a top growth market for its companies — banking on an EU-India free trade agreement and New Delhi’s booming tech ecosystem to offset a bleak global trade outlook.
What happened: Italy’s Industry Minister Adolfo Urso, speaking at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, said exports to India could double within three years once the EU-India FTA enters into force, expected by late 2026.
Zoom in:
- Urso called India “the moment” for Italian businesses, noting exports to the country rose nearly 10% in 2025 despite a downturn in global trade.
- He said tariff cuts and removal of non-tariff barriers under the FTA would unlock opportunities across sectors — from machinery and automotive to luxury goods, food, wine and olive oil.
- “This is the new frontier of Made in Italy,” he said.
The bigger picture: Rome is increasingly looking east and south for trade growth, with Urso also pointing to future deals along a modern “cotton route” linking the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Australia.
- The strategy reflects a broader European push to diversify supply chains and markets beyond traditional partners.
Tech and infrastructure angle: Urso met Italian companies operating in India’s innovation ecosystem, including telecom group Sparkle, which is developing the Blue Raman high-capacity subsea cable linking Mumbai to Genoa — a key digital corridor between India, the Mediterranean and Europe.
- Digital firms Almaviva and Harmonic Innovation Group, as well as automaker Stellantis, were also present, highlighting industrial AI cooperation.
Startups in focus: Italian startups in digital health, e-commerce, IoT and blockchain are already active in India, which Rome sees as fertile ground for scaling high-tech partnerships.
Africa link: The Italian Minister also promoted Italy’s AI Hub for Sustainable Development, launched during the G7 presidency, as a tool to expand industrial and technological partnerships in Africa under the Mattei Plan.
- On the sidelines of the summit, Italy signed a trilateral agreement with India and Kenya — alongside India’s Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw and Kenya’s Minister for Information, Communications and Digital Economy William Kabogo Gitau — to advance artificial intelligence development across the African continent.
- Rome sees India as a crucial partner for scaling AI and innovation projects through the Hub, translating cooperation into concrete initiatives for sustainable development in Africa while anchoring the effort within the broader Italy-India-Africa axis envisioned by the Mattei Plan.
Zoom out: Modi’s AI vision. If the AI boom feels like a runaway train, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to steer it toward what he calls an ethical, human-centric path — especially for the Global South.
- India and other developing countries worry they could become mere markets or data sources for U.S. and Chinese AI giants.
- Modi’s government is pushing tighter rules on data collection by social media platforms and advocating authenticity safeguards such as watermarking and source tracking for AI-generated content.
- The strategy bets that India’s 1.4-billion-person market is too big for global tech firms to ignore.
- Major companies are already committing billions in AI investments, including infrastructure partnerships that could reach massive computing capacity.
What we’re watching: If the EU-India FTA is finalized on schedule, India could become one of Italy’s fastest-growing export destinations — anchoring Rome’s economic pivot toward the Indo-Mediterranean and aligning with New Delhi’s ambition to shape the rules of the AI age, not just its markets.
