Ayush Summit

India Prepares for Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit 2025

Kuldeep Pisda

10 Dec 2025 — 9 min read

Preparations are underway at the Ministry of Ayush for the Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit 2025, with the government moving early to structure the event as a flagship platform for investment, research collaboration and technology deployment in traditional medicine and holistic health systems. The initiative is positioned to align India’s Ayush ecosystem with global developments in evidence-based traditional medicine, health innovation and cross-border partnerships.

Background and context of the summit

The Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit is conceived as a dedicated forum to connect Ayush enterprises, research institutions, start-ups, investors and regulators on a single platform. It builds on India’s recent efforts to position Ayush as both a health resource and an economic sector, including the creation of dedicated Ayush infrastructure, expansion of education and research, and stronger engagement with multilateral bodies.

Over the last decade, the Ministry of Ayush has focused on integrating traditional systems such as Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa Rigpa and Homoeopathy into the broader public health and wellness agenda. This has included support for research on safety and efficacy, standard setting for drugs and therapies, and the development of Ayush-based preventive and promotive health services. The proposed summit for 2025 is designed as an extension of this policy trajectory, with a sharper focus on investment, innovation, and global collaboration.

The summit is expected to draw upon India’s ongoing cooperation with the World Health Organization and other international partners in the traditional medicine domain. India is already working closely with WHO on the Global Centre for Traditional Medicine in Jamnagar and is slated to co-host the second WHO Global Summit on Traditional Medicine, reflecting the country’s growing visibility in the sector.

Announcement and early-stage preparations

The Ministry of Ayush has initiated formal preparations for the 2025 edition of the Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit, starting with internal consultations, inter-ministerial coordination and engagement with state governments, industry bodies and research councils. In administrative terms, this involves the constitution of organising committees, identification of partner ministries and agencies, and the preparation of concept notes and thematic agendas for the event.

Senior officials have indicated that the upcoming summit will be structured around investment promotion, innovation showcasing, start-up support, regulatory facilitation and international partnerships. These themes are being mapped to specific sessions, working groups and parallel events to enable targeted discussion and transaction-oriented engagement.

The preparatory process also covers coordination with India’s foreign missions and international organisations in order to identify potential country partners, institutional collaborators and investor delegations. This is intended to ensure that the summit has a genuinely global character, with participation from a wide range of geographies, including Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The Ministry of Ayush is working to create a robust platform where investors, innovators, researchers and policymakers can jointly explore the full potential of traditional medicine and integrative health, with a focus on quality, safety and evidence-based practice.

Within the government, the Ministry is expected to work closely with departments responsible for health, pharmaceuticals, commerce, industry promotion, start-ups, biotechnology and standards, in order to ensure that policy, regulatory and financing perspectives are adequately represented in the summit programme.

Objectives of the Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit 2025

The 2025 summit is being framed around a set of strategic objectives that combine health policy goals with industrial development and innovation outcomes. Key aims include:

Mobilising domestic and international investment into Ayush-based products, services, infrastructure and research facilities.
Showcasing innovations in clinical practice, digital health, product development, diagnostics, wellness tourism and community health models rooted in Ayush systems.
Facilitating collaborations between Ayush institutions and global universities, research centres and medical systems for joint studies, clinical trials and technology development.
Supporting start-ups and small enterprises in the Ayush sector by connecting them with mentors, incubators, financiers and market access initiatives.
Encouraging the development and adoption of standards, quality assurance protocols and regulatory pathways that facilitate global acceptance of Ayush products and practices.
Providing a space for state governments to present their Ayush infrastructure, industrial parks, wellness corridors and tourism circuits to potential investors and partners.

These objectives are expected to be translated into measurable outcomes such as memoranda of understanding, investment commitments, new collaborative projects and follow-up programmes for technology transfer, capacity building and market access.

Proposed structure and thematic focus

The Ministry’s preparatory framework for the summit envisages a multi-track structure combining plenary sessions, thematic conferences, business-to-business engagements, and sector-specific exhibitions. While the detailed agenda will be finalised closer to the event, broad thematic areas being considered include:

Evidence-based Ayush and integrative healthcare models, including clinical research, outcomes measurement and health systems integration.
Ayush pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, with a focus on quality, safety, standardisation, intellectual property and international regulatory compliance.
Digital health and Ayush, covering telemedicine, remote monitoring, AI-supported decision tools, electronic health records and mobile health applications.
Start-ups and innovation ecosystems in Ayush, including incubation models, venture funding, regulatory mentorship and global scaling strategies.
Ayush education, skill development and workforce planning, aimed at strengthening human resources for both clinical and non-clinical roles.
Wellness, preventive health and tourism, focusing on wellness centres, medical value travel, wellness tourism circuits and community-based health promotion.
Supply chains for medicinal plants, raw materials and traditional formulations, including cultivation, conservation, value addition and farmer integration.

Parallel to high-level discussions, the summit is expected to feature an exhibition zone where public and private sector entities can showcase products, technologies, research outputs and service models. This zone will likely include participation from Ayush drug manufacturers, wellness chains, hospitals, universities, start-ups, state Ayush departments and public sector undertakings.

Institutional and stakeholder participation

The Ministry’s preparation roadmap places considerable emphasis on inclusive stakeholder participation. Core institutional participants are expected to include:

National Ayush research councils and institutes engaged in clinical, pharmacological and public health research across various traditional systems.
Universities and teaching institutions offering Ayush programmes at undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral levels.
Regulatory bodies associated with drugs, medical devices, quality standards and accreditation, in order to address compliance and market access issues.
Public health agencies and programme managers from the central and state governments who are involved in integrating Ayush into national health programmes.
Industry associations representing Ayush manufacturers, wellness providers, exporters and allied sectors.
Start-up incubators, accelerators and innovation hubs that are currently supporting ventures in health, biotechnology, life sciences and digital technologies.
International organisations, development partners and global health institutions working on traditional medicine, integrative health and primary healthcare.

By bringing these stakeholders together, the summit aims to reduce information asymmetry, identify policy bottlenecks and generate a more predictable and supportive environment for long-term investment and innovation in the Ayush sector.

Administrative mechanisms and coordination

From an administrative perspective, preparations for the summit involve the setting up of coordination mechanisms within the Ministry of Ayush and across government. These mechanisms typically include:

An apex steering group with senior leadership from the Ministry and representatives of partner ministries and agencies.
Working groups on investment promotion, innovation and research, international relations, logistics and protocol, communication and outreach, and follow-up action.
Dedicated secretariat or project management unit to handle event planning, stakeholder communication, documentation and data management.

Inter-ministerial consultations will be important for aligning the summit’s agenda with related national initiatives, such as industrial corridors, export promotion missions, health system reforms and digital governance platforms. This helps ensure that commitments emerging from the summit can be integrated into ongoing programmes and are not limited to the event itself.

State governments, particularly those with established or emerging Ayush clusters, are likely to be invited to present their investment-ready projects, industrial park proposals, wellness tourism plans and research collaborations. This requires coordination between state Ayush departments, industry departments and investment promotion agencies.

Linkages with broader health and economic policy

The Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit 2025 is intended to complement larger national objectives in health, industry, innovation and rural development. At the health systems level, Ayush is being integrated with primary care, non-communicable disease prevention, mental health support, elderly care and wellness promotion. The summit’s focus on evidence-based practice and innovation is expected to support this integration through better research, standardisation and technology use.

From an economic perspective, Ayush is seen as a sector with potential for job creation, export growth, tourism development and rural livelihoods. The medicinal plant value chain, in particular, spans cultivation, collection, processing, formulation and export, offering scope for farmer participation and micro, small and medium enterprise development. By facilitating investment into processing units, research laboratories, quality testing facilities and logistics, the summit could help upgrade this value chain and improve incomes for rural communities.

Innovation in Ayush also intersects with India’s start-up and digital public infrastructure agendas. Ayush-focused digital platforms, decision-support tools, monitoring systems and consumer-facing applications have the potential to plug into broader health and data systems. The summit’s emphasis on collaboration between Ayush institutions and technology innovators is likely to open new possibilities in this area.

Potential impact on services, research and industry

The impact of the summit is expected to be felt across multiple dimensions of the Ayush ecosystem. In service delivery, new models of integrative care could emerge through partnerships between Ayush and modern medicine institutions, leveraging joint protocols, referral pathways and shared data systems. Investment commitments could support the expansion of Ayush hospitals, wellness centres and teleconsultation services, particularly in underserved areas.

In research, collaborations formalised at the summit may lead to multicentric clinical trials, pharmacovigilance networks, longitudinal studies and meta-analyses that help build a stronger evidence base for Ayush interventions. Joint work with international universities could support capacity building, exchange programmes and shared research infrastructure.

For industry, the summit’s investment and innovation tracks may help address long-standing challenges around quality consistency, international regulatory alignment, branding and market diversification. Structured interactions with regulators can clarify requirements for product approval, labelling, safety data and clinical substantiation, which are essential for access to major export markets.

The start-up ecosystem stands to benefit through exposure to global investors, access to mentors and accelerators, and the possibility of joint ventures with established players. This may be particularly relevant for ventures working at the intersection of Ayush and technology, such as diagnostics, remote monitoring, personalised wellness planning and digital therapeutics.

International collaboration and standard setting

The Ministry’s preparation for the summit is unfolding against the backdrop of growing international interest in traditional medicine and integrative health models. The World Health Organization’s work on traditional medicine, including dedicated summits and the establishment of specialised centres, has underscored the need for robust evidence, standardisation and regulatory clarity in this field.

India’s engagement with these processes provides a foundation for the Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit to host substantive discussions on harmonisation of standards, cross-border regulatory cooperation, mutual recognition of quality certifications and collaborative research protocols. Such discussions can help reduce barriers for the global movement of Ayush products and services, while maintaining safety and quality benchmarks.

The summit is also expected to serve as a platform for bilateral and multilateral agreements on research cooperation, training, knowledge exchange and joint investments in infrastructure. This may include twinning arrangements between institutions, shared use of laboratories, co-authored research and co-development of digital tools.

Citizen-facing implications and public communication

While the summit is primarily an investment and innovation platform, its outcomes are likely to have downstream implications for citizens in terms of access, quality and diversity of health and wellness services. Strengthening research and standards can contribute to more reliable information on when and how Ayush interventions are effective, enabling citizens to make informed choices.

New investment in service delivery infrastructure, including clinics and telehealth platforms, can improve geographical reach, especially in rural and semi-urban areas. Initiatives emerging from the summit may also support public health programmes focused on lifestyle-related conditions, mental health, reproductive health and healthy ageing, where Ayush-based preventive and promotive approaches are increasingly being explored.

Public communication will therefore be an important component of the summit’s preparation and follow-up phases. Clear messaging on the evidence base, safety considerations, appropriate use and integration with other health services is essential to avoid misinformation and to reinforce the role of qualified practitioners and regulated products.

Follow-up mechanisms and monitoring

To ensure that the summit translates into sustained impact, the Ministry of Ayush is expected to design follow-up mechanisms that track commitments, support implementation and document outcomes. These mechanisms may include:

A digital dashboard or portal capturing investment commitments, research collaborations, policy announcements and regulatory initiatives emerging from the summit.
Designated nodal officers or units within the Ministry and partner institutions to provide handholding support to investors, researchers and start-ups.
Periodic review meetings and progress reports to monitor the status of key projects and partnerships.
Documentation of case studies, best practices and lessons learned, which can inform subsequent editions of the summit and other sectoral initiatives.

Such follow-up structures are important to maintain continuity between summits and to embed new initiatives within existing schemes and programmes, including those related to research funding, industrial promotion, export support and digital innovation.

Positioning within India’s future Ayush roadmap

The launch of preparations for the Global Ayush Investment and Innovation Summit 2025 signals the Ministry’s intent to adopt a long-term, structured approach to sector development. By focusing on investment and innovation, the summit complements traditional policy levers such as regulation, curriculum design and public service delivery.

In the years ahead, the insights and partnerships generated through the summit can inform updates to national Ayush policies, guidelines for integrative healthcare, strategies for international cooperation and tools for digital health integration. They may also shape how India engages with global conversations on traditional medicine, health equity, universal health coverage and sustainable development.

The objective is to create an enabling environment in which traditional medicine can contribute meaningfully to public health, economic growth and innovation, while operating within a rigorous framework of quality, safety and scientific inquiry.

As preparations advance, the Ministry is likely to periodically release further details on dates, venue, thematic sessions, partner institutions and participation modalities. These announcements will be relevant for stakeholders across government, academia, industry and civil society who are seeking to engage with the evolving Ayush landscape at national and global levels.