June 29, 2026
Step into Bastar today, and the first thing you notice is green. Dense forest canopies roll towards the horizon, roads are open and busy where they were inaccessible for decades, and schools are functioning in areas like Abujhmad for the first time in over forty years. Tribal communities that lived for years under the shadow of conflict are now resettling, rebuilding, and looking ahead.
For more than five decades, the region carried the weight of one of India’s longest internal security challenges. Today, that chapter is giving way to a new phase. According to announcements by the Union Home Ministry in May 2026, Bastar achieved key anti-Naxal objectives ahead of schedule, with thousands of former cadres surrendering over the past two years and rehabilitation support, including land, education, and skill training, reaching affected communities. Many are now running small businesses or working in agriculture.
A fertile ground has been prepared. With peace returning, connectivity improving, and a national vision to accelerate the region’s development, a different conversation is beginning to emerge in Bastar. Local products such as Bastar Coffee and Dhokra Art are finding markets beyond the region. Tourism is steadily returning. Improved infrastructure is opening access to education, markets, and services. Most importantly, a generation of young people now sees opportunity where previous generations saw constraints. The conditions for entrepreneurship are more conducive than they have been in decades, and the institutions needed to support that entrepreneurship are beginning to take shape.
This is where iCreate’s commitment to Bastar begins.
iCreate (International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Technology), supported by the Government of India and the Government of Gujarat, is India’s leading incubator providing deep tech startups the fastest runway to commercialisation. With a focus on hardware-based innovations across Mobility Tech, Climate Tech, Health Tech, and Defence & Aerospace Tech, iCreate has supported over 900 innovations and facilitated more than 100 patents through incubation, acceleration programmes, mentorship, market access, and funding support. Having served as the Secretariat for Startup20 under India’s G20 Presidency, iCreate is now extending its innovation ecosystem-building capabilities into Bastar through a formal collaboration with SMKV-ISF, the Incubation and Startup Foundation of Shaheed Mahendra Karma Vishwavidyalaya.
SMKV-ISF brings exactly the ground-level understanding this work depends on: academic depth, institutional reach across the Bastar region, and a tribal-region mandate that only a locally rooted institution can hold. Its flagship initiative, Innovation Mahakumbh 1.0, co-envisioned with Swadeshi Bharat Abhiyan and hosted at the SMKV Bastar campus, drew over 2,000 participants, more than 200 ideas, over 100 entrepreneurs, and more than 80 startups, with partner institutions including IIT Bhilai, IIM Raipur, and NIT Raipur. It signalled that Bastar’s innovation ecosystem already has state government backing and strong institutional convening power. The iCreate–SMKV Letter of Collaboration was formalised at the event, with Siddharth Pareek, Head of Strategic Alliances, and Dr. Praveen Desai, Head of TBI, representing iCreate.
The real work ahead goes beyond any single programme. It involves strengthening SMKV-ISF’s own processes, frameworks, and institutional capacity so that it can continue supporting founders in Bastar well beyond the first cycle of this collaboration. The intent is to incubate the incubator.
A core objective behind the iCreate–SMKV partnership is to make local entrepreneurship the engine of Bastar’s growth. The logic compounds over time. When a founder from Bastar builds a viable business, they hire locally, source locally, and reduce migration pressures on the region’s youth. They mentor the next cohort. They become proof that entrepreneurship is a viable path for a young person in Jagdalpur, Sukma, or Bijapur. Over time, dozens of such founders create a structural shift, and the region’s economic story begins to change from within.
This work reflects a wider commitment at iCreate. Under the iCreate Bharat Innovation Network, iCreate is partnering with e-cells, incubators, and academic institutions across Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns to turn them into launchpads for innovation within their own regions. Partner institutions can access funding opportunities, including performance-based incentives, grants for prototype development, and direct access to iCreate’s mentor network, infrastructure, and national showcase platform. Regional institutions bring geography, talent, and problem statements. iCreate brings capability, capital, and national reach. SMKV-ISF is among the earliest institutional partners under this framework, making Bastar one of the first regions where it has been rolled out.
For too long, Bastar was known more for its challenges than its potential. Yet beneath those narratives were communities rich in knowledge, enterprise, and resilience. Today, as the region enters a new phase of growth, the opportunity is not simply to change perceptions of Bastar, but to unlock the potential that has always existed within it.
The next chapter of Bastar’s story will not be written in policy documents or security reports. It will be written by founders building businesses, creating jobs, and solving local problems. The role of institutions such as iCreate and SMKV-ISF is to ensure that these entrepreneurs have access to the mentorship, networks, and opportunities they need to succeed.
If that happens, Bastar will not merely be a beneficiary of development. It will become a model for how entrepreneurship can drive transformation from within.
