From India Everywhere 2006 to Davos 2026: A Spirit of Dialogue

Some ideas don’t arrive fully formed. They begin as a discomfort.

I remember a breakfast in Davos sometime in 2003 or 2004. Those were the years many of us from India stayed at the Central Sporthotel — informal, crowded, always alive with conversation. Over coffee, Nandan Nilekani and I found ourselves circling the same observation that seemed unavoidable that year: China was everywhere. On panels, in corridors, in the way CEOs and policymakers framed the future. India, by contrast, barely featured.

We shrugged it off then. Davos has its rhythms. Some years tilt one way, some another. But the thought lingered. The same conversation resurfaced again in 2005. Same place. Same feeling. China dominated the narrative once again; India felt peripheral, almost apologetic in comparison. This time, it didn’t
feel like coincidence. It felt like a gap.


Two weeks after Davos, on 5 February 2005, Nandan and I met in Delhi. That meeting — unremarkable on the surface — became the starting point of what would later be known as India Everywhere campaign - a unique country initiative at Davos & in many ways a pioneer . It wasn’t conceived as a branding exercise alone. It was driven by a deeper conviction: that India needed to tell its story with confidence, coherence, and scale — and do so in its own voice.

Also read: From Delhi to Davos — A Spirit of Dialogue

Launched at Davos in 2006, India Everywhere — led by the India Brand Equity Foundation in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry — marked a clear inflection point. The initiative was chaired by Nandan Nilekani, with me serving as CEO of IBEF and Deputy Director General of CII at the time. It changed how India showed up at Davos. More importantly, it changed how India began to see itself in the global economic conversation. India was no longer content to be a footnote or an afterthought. It was prepared to be part of the main text.

The impact of India Everywhere extended well beyond Davos. The campaign attracted wide international attention and was written about extensively — from cover stories in India Today to features and analyses in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and the Harvard Business Review.

Over time, it also became a case study in several universities, often cited in discussions on country branding, economic diplomacy, and narrative-building. For many observers, it marked one of the early moments when India began to consciously shape its global economic story rather than react to it. Credible India wrapped up with incredible India!

As Davos 2026 approaches, this year also marks nearly 20 years since that first India Everywhere campaign. The anniversary is not just a milestone in memory; it is a useful moment of contrast.

Because India today is not trying to announce itself. It is already part of the conversation. What underpins this shift is not optics, but economics. India arrives at Davos 2026 as the world’s fourth-largest economy, widely expected to move into the third position in the near future. In a global environment marked by slowing growth, fractured supply chains, trade tensions, and geopolitical uncertainty, India stands out as one of the few large economies combining scale, growth, and resilience.

Foreign direct investment flows, despite global headwinds, continue to reflect long-term confidence in India’s market depth and policy direction. That confidence rests on recent and ongoing reforms — a more mature GST framework, sustained improvements in ease of doing business, deep digitisation of government processes, infrastructure-led public capital expenditure, production-linked incentives, and reforms in insolvency, logistics, and
manufacturing. Combined with strong domestic consumption and a robust digital public infrastructure, India’s growth today is driven as much from within as from global cycles.

This matters in Davos conversations.

It positions India not as a hedge, an alternative, or a temporary bright spot — but increasingly as an anchor economy. Large enough to absorb shocks. Consistent enough to offer continuity. Complex enough to understand the trade-offs of growth in a fractured world.

Which brings us to the theme of Davos 2026: A Spirit of Dialogue. At first glance, it sounds almost gentle — perhaps even understated. But placed against today’s global context, it feels deliberate. Dialogue today is no longer about polite agreement or staged consensus. It is about managing differences, navigating competition, and keeping channels open when trust is strained and certainty is scarce. In many ways, this mirrors India’s own approach to the world.

India’s engagement has rarely been binary. It has preferred dialogue over declarations, engagement over alignment, and continuity over dramatic swings. It speaks across ideologies and geographies, often listening as much as it speaks. In a world increasingly tempted by extremes, that instinct feels less like caution and more like strategy.

There is also a quiet confidence in how India approaches dialogue today — less defensive, less eager to convince, more comfortable with complexity. That, too, is a marker of maturity. Perhaps that is the real continuity between India Everywhere in 2006 and India @ Davos 2026. Then, India was asserting visibility — making sure it was seen and heard.

Now, India is exercising presence — embedded, confident, and consequential. This is not a culmination. It is a checkpoint. These are pre-Davos reflections — notes before the snow falls and the conversations begin.

The next piece will look at how this presence translates on the ground: pavilions, corridors, ministers, CEOs, states — and the many layers of India @ Davos 2026.

The autho is Co-Founder, Pubic Affairs Forum of India ( PAFI). Views are personal.