UAE sovereign funds, firms to boost investments in India

Ahmedabad: UAE companies and sovereign wealth funds are set to deepen their India bets, with several significant investment announcements expected in the coming months with artificial intelligence, logistics, food security and infrastructure among the key sectors in focus, according to the Gulf nation's top investment official, Mohammad Alhawi.

Describing India-UAE ties as having evolved from a trade partnership into an investment partnership, the undersecretary at the UAE ministry of investment said the next phase will be defined by long-term capital flows in both directions.

"Our sovereign wealth funds continue to look actively at the Indian market...UAE companies are looking very seriously at India," Alhawi told ET on the sidelines of an event here organised by UAE-based investment platform Investopia in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry. "Throughout this year we've consistently had senior leadership teams visiting India to evaluate opportunities. I believe you'll see a number of significant investment announcements very soon," he said. The UAE has invested about $25.6 billion in India between 2000 and 2026, and accounts for around 70% of all Gulf investments into India. "We don't see this slowing down. On the contrary, we expect exponential growth over the coming years," he said. Bilateral trade has already crossed $100 billion, and the two governments now target to grow it to $200 billion by 2032.


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Alhawi said UAE's sovereign wealth funds would continue to play a bigger role in India's growth story, and cited the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority's commitment to explore up to $1 billion with the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund as an example of deepening partnership.

AI has emerged as one of the biggest pillars of the investment partnership. Referring to the partnership between UAE's G42 and India's C-DAC to build a supercomputing cluster for India's AI Mission, Alhawi said cooperation has expanded beyond technology investments to jointly developing AI infrastructure, including data centres inside India.

"The logic is simple. We bring compute and capital, India brings talent and scale, and neither of us could do this alone at this speed," he said. "It runs both ways. The UAE is building one of the largest AI infrastructure bases anywhere, and Indian engineers and Indian companies are already part of that build. We are not investing in India's AI sector from the outside. We are building the same stack together."

Beyond AI, the UAE is prioritising investments in food security, including agriculture and food processing, logistics, industry, and financial services, while also expecting Indian companies to increase investments into the Emirates.

Addressing concerns over geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, he said Indian businesses remain cautiously optimistic about the UAE, and view the current situation as a temporary disruption rather than a structural concern.

Several companies plan to visit the UAE next week to begin investment discussions immediately, Alhawi said. He emphasised that the fundamentals of the UAE economy remain strong, encouraging long-term capital flows.