Synopsis: India’s exports hit a record $863.1 billion in FY26, yet the businesses driving that growth rarely share the spotlight. On September 25 in New Delhi, the Payoneer India Cross-Border Excellence Awards 2026, in association with The Economic Times, closed its 2026 cycle with a summit on market access, growth corridors and outbound compliance, and 16 category winners that show what Indian global enterprise looks like today.

NEW DELHI, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — India’s combined goods and services exports reached an all-time high of $863.1 billion in FY26, according to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Services did the heavy lifting: they rose 8.7% to a record $421.3 billion, up from $387.5 billion a year earlier, and now make up 48.8% of the country’s total export basket. Back in FY15, services exports stood at $158.1 billion.

But the road ahead demands even greater resilience, more rigorous execution and stricter regulatory compliance. The Centre’s target is $2 trillion in exports by 2030-31, split evenly at $1 trillion each for goods and services. That means more than doubling today’s record in five years, a point a Commerce Ministry official made in August, when he said the goal calls for structural transformation rather than incremental gains. E-commerce shows the scale of the climb: the government’s target of $200-300 billion in e-commerce exports by FY30 starts from an estimated $4-5 billion in FY23, according to a July 2024 EY-ASSOCHAM report. Ambitions of that scale raise a simple question: who, exactly, is going to deliver them?

That question sat at the heart of the Payoneer India Cross-Border Excellence Awards 2026, presented in association with The Economic Times. On the evening of September 25, in New Delhi, the programme answered it in two ways: first with a summit, then with an awards ceremony.

Before the trophies, the playbook

After a welcome address by Pranbihanga Borpuzari, Senior Editor, Economictimes.com, the evening moved through three conversations, each diving into a different stage of an Indian business’s journey abroad: getting access, finding the route, and building the structure to stay.

Nagesh Devata, Senior Vice President and Head of APAC, at Payoneer, delivered the inaugural address, India’s Next Export Leap: Turning Global Market Access into Growth. Earlier that summer, on July 15, the India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement entered into force, giving zero-duty access on about 99% of tariff lines, covering nearly all of India’s export value to Britain, and opening services commitments across 137 sub-sectors, according to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The India-EU free trade agreement, concluded in January, awaits ratification, and Oman’s agreement is in force, while the signed New Zealand agreement is set to expand access.

The panel that followed, India’s New Growth Corridors: Building Pathways to Global Markets, brought together Dr. Abhay Sinha, Director General of the Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC), Commodore Bunty Sethi, IN (Retd.), Director, Aerospace & Defence, UK India Business Council, and Dr. Sridevi Arunachalam, Founder, Indo – UAE Economic Chamber of Commerce, with Borpuzari moderating. Between them sat two of the most consequential corridors for Indian exporters today: services, now close to half of the country’s export earnings, and advanced manufacturing tied into global supply chains.

The third conversation entered the regulatory landscape. The fireside chat, Going Global: Navigating ODI Regulations & Compliance for Indian Businesses, featured MS Mani, Partner at Deloitte, and Pashupati Nath, Partner at Khaitan & Co, in discussion with Gaurav Shisodia, Vice President & Country Manager, Payoneer India. For a growing business, the step from exporting to a market to setting up an entity in it is where ambition meets paperwork, and where the rules on overseas direct investment decide how smoothly that step is taken.

The awards were presented in two acts, from 7:00 PM and again from 8:00 PM, with the compliance conversation placed squarely between them. Recognition and know-how were shared on one stage, and the dinner and networking that closed the night gave both room to carry on.

The problem: A growth story without its protagonists

The summit’s agenda mirrored the problem the programme was built to solve. India’s recognition landscape is crowded with startup and entrepreneurship honours, but very few platforms focus specifically on businesses that have built and scaled international revenue. Businesses earning international revenue have not always received recognition proportionate to their contribution.

That invisibility carries a real cost. A mid-sized exporter pitching a distributor in Dubai or a procurement team in Frankfurt has little independent, third-party validation to point to. Many businesses serving global customers also defy tidy labels, whether a bookkeeping firm running offshore finance teams, a regional OTT platform selling to the diaspora, or a steelmaker supplying renewable-energy projects abroad. Lumped into generic categories, they are either misjudged or missed altogether.

The programme’s mission spoke directly to that problem statement: to set a national benchmark for export excellence, backed by a transparent evaluation and an expert jury, so that recognition means something to global partners and not just to peers at home. Its vision was captured in the sentiment of honouring the visionaries building India’s $2-trillion export future.

The culmination of a recognition journey

The recognition carried weight because the programme was designed to look beyond headline growth. Its jury, evaluation framework and categories reflected the different ways Indian businesses build a presence abroad.

A jury that demonstrated credibility: Four jurors brought four vantage points: Dr. Abhay Sinha of SEPC on export policy and promotion; Dr. Abhilasha Gaur, CEO of SSC NASSCOM, on the talent pipeline behind India’s services exports; Dr. Sridevi Arunachalam, Founding Chairman and President of the Indo UAE Economic Chamber of Commerce, on bilateral trade and market access; and Sarita Raichura, Director at Blume Ventures, on what it takes to scale a company.

A transparent, weighted evaluation framework: Nominees were scored on a weighted framework, and the weights tell their own story. Growth and scale carried 40%, measured on revenue trajectory over two to three years, with billed foreign revenue as the yardstick for service exporters. Market reach and diversification carried 30%, a clear signal that dependence on a single overseas market is a risk rather than a strength. Innovation and differentiation (15%), employment and community impact (10%), and digital infrastructure and payments readiness (5%) completed the picture of a business built to last abroad.

Categories that exhibit how India actually exports: Instead of one catch-all trophy, sixteen categories across four tracks gave distinct business models a fair hearing: six for service exports, three for e-commerce product verticals, four independent categories spanning direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, global employers, women-led export businesses and incorporation partners, and three regional honours covering North India, South India, and West & East India.

The top honours, an ecosystem celebrated

The awards ceremony ensured it represented a diverse cross-section of the new export economy. Technology and services were there in force: SalesCode.ai, an AI-native route-to-market platform for consumer goods companies, says it operates in 25 countries, while Nexdigm reports clients in more than 50. But so were businesses that rarely feature in conversations about India’s global rise. Anuradha Gupta, CEO of Amantya Technologies Pvt Ltd, took home the Women in Export Excellence title. Amantya is a global technology company working across telecom, cloud, AI, and digital engineering. CTA Apparels, the Global Employer winner, employs more than 6,000 people. The SaaS & B2B Solutions honour went to Xoxoday, a B2B SaaS company focused on rewards, incentives, loyalty and recognition. Ziegler Aerospace, which makes structures and seat components for aviation customers abroad, was named Regional Export Leader in the South India category. Careerera LLC received the Edtech award for its online platform focused on career advancement, upskilling and reskilling.

The impact: A benchmark, a stage and a signal

Measured against the problem it set out to solve, the programme leaves behind three things.

The evaluation framework offers a practical picture of what the programme values in export-ready businesses. For businesses still building toward global scale, that is a practical checklist.

Winners gain visibility across The Economic Times and Payoneer platforms and their social channels, putting their stories in front of investors, partners and decision-makers. For a firm pitching a buyer overseas, a nationally benchmarked recognition is credibility it can carry into the room.

By pairing the ceremony with sessions on trade agreements, growth corridors and overseas investment rules, the programme treated recognition and capability as two halves of one job. The message to the sector was clear: the next phase of India’s export growth will be won as much on execution as on ambition.

India’s export story has long been told in aggregates, in billions and percentages and targets. On one evening in New Delhi, it was told in names, celebrating the businesses building what India will take to the world and signalling the road ahead.

About Payoneer

Payoneer is the financial platform for cross-border business and global payments. Payoneer empowers millions of businesses with the financial tools and services they need to grow and transact globally with confidence. Payoneer makes it easier for businesses, particularly in emerging markets, to connect to the global economy, pay and get paid across borders, manage their funds across multiple currencies, and grow their businesses.

About The Economic Times

The Economic Times is India’s leading financial daily and one of the world’s most widely read English-language business publications. Its digital and print platforms reach executives, policymakers, investors and business leaders across the world.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/payoneer-india-cross-border-excellence-awards-2026-closes-with-a-blueprint-for-indias-next-export-leap-302916713.html

SINGAPORE, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Researchers at the National University of Singapore’s College of Design and Engineering (CDE) have developed a fibre that functions as pixels and senses touch at the same time, integrating 54 of them into a sleeve to create the world’s first touchscreen built into a garment.

The sleeve displays images and video, responds to finger presses and connects wirelessly to other devices, yet stays as washable, breathable and flexible as ordinary clothing. The team’s invention enables the creation of garments that act as a direct interface to a wearer’s health data and their digital devices, with no rigid screen involved. 

The screens that we are familiar with, such as those on phones and laptops, typically present   graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on flat, rigid panels that display information and enable interaction. Textiles, woven from one-dimensional fibres, have never matched this capability. A full-colour, touch-sensitive display that can be threaded like yarn was, until now, out of reach.

“What made this possible was our ability to construct the GUI system from electronic building blocks in fibre form — similar to traditional yarn, but with the sophisticated electronic functionality built directly into the fibres,” said Asst Prof Khudiyev.

The team, led by Assistant Professor Tural Khudiyev from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at CDE, published their findings in Nature on 21 October 2026.

Interconnecting thousands of chips along a thread

To build a fibre-enabled garment display, the NUS team developed a programmable method that creates connection points along tiny, insulated wires exactly where each microchip needs them. A laser exposes these locations, while controlled surface wetting guides molten solder to bond only at the programmed points. This enabled the team to integrate more than 5,000 chips through over 20,000 electrical connections.

The strip of interconnected digital LEDs was then integrated into a multilayer fibre using a thermal drawing approach, which allows precise formation of the touch-sensitive and pixel layers within a thread just a millimetre thick and 10 metres long. A layer beneath the LEDs senses touch — pressing the fibre completes a circuit, and the signal reveals exactly where your finger landed so the nearest pixel lights up.  

“A fibre has a one-dimensional, axially symmetric geometry, which makes it difficult to build complex circuitry using approaches developed for conventional two-dimensional electronics,” added Asst Prof Khudiyev. “We overcame this limitation through a new interconnection architecture, which enables thousands of microelectronic devices to be integrated and interconnected along a fibre.”

Beyond the touchscreen: Wear your apps on your sleeve

In the team’s prototype, 54 pixel fibres, each carrying 96 LEDs, were threaded into the forearm of a sleeve to form a 96 by 54-pixel display measuring 168 mm by 105 mm, refreshing 30 frames per second with 8-bit colour depth. Each fibre has its own control channel, so a fault in one line leaves its neighbours working normally, and the system can register several touches at once. Alongside the pixel fibres, the team integrated peripheral fibres made the same way, carrying a microphone, a speaker and sensors that track movement, find magnetic north, measure temperature and gauge how bright the surroundings are.

Together, the fibres support the functions early generations of smartphones could perform: run a calculator, show a photo gallery, play a video at 30 frames per second (25 frames per second with synchronised audio), work as a compass, respond to voice commands, and receive images over Bluetooth. They can even rotate the screen and adjust brightness automatically. When positioned under the arm, the temperature-sensing fibre lets the sleeve read and display body temperature.

Importantly, the garment still behaves like fabric. Light output and touch response were nearly unchanged after 50 detergent washes in a typical washing machine, and after 1,000 bends around a 5 mm radius. In addition, the built display is as breathable as cotton, polyester and denim, and stays within established safety limits for skin contact.

Clothing as an interface

Smaller microchips and thinner fibres, both compatible with the team’s method, offer a route to sharper and larger displays. Furthermore, as the display and sensing elements sit along the length of the fibre, the thinner fibres can be knitted, weaved and embroidered using standard industrial machines. The same technology could one day perform other functions such as tracking health signs and delivering touch-based feedback.

“Healthcare is one particularly promising application,” said Asst Prof Khudiyev. “A garment could continuously collect physiological information through fibre-based sensors and allow the wearer to access and interact with that information directly through their clothing. Combined with artificial intelligence (AI), this could enable personalised health monitoring, feedback and assistance. Just as smartphones enabled applications that were difficult to imagine when they first appeared, garment GUIs could ultimately enable entirely new applications that do not yet exist.”

What’s next

The research team’s next step is to push the textile touchscreen further—towards higher resolution, integrated sensing and on-device AI, bringing display, touch, sensing and intelligence together within the same textile platform. This convergence could take the technology far beyond a wearable screen, towards clothing that understands both the wearer and their surroundings, providing information or interaction when and where needed.

The researchers are now developing a new interface between people and digital intelligence—one that extends beyond a device users carry to become a natural part of what they wear.

Read more at: https://news.nus.edu.sg/worlds-first-touchscreen-in-garment

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nus-researchers-thread-the-worlds-first-touchscreen-into-a-garment-302916717.html

SOURCE National University of Singapore

Accomplished technology services executive brings more than 30 years of leadership experience, a proven track record of scaling businesses, and a commitment to exceptional client experiences.

NEEDHAM, Mass., Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Coretelligent, a leading provider of managed IT, cybersecurity, cloud, and technology solutions, today announced the appointment of Vince DeLuca as Chief Executive Officer. DeLuca brings more than 30 years of technology services leadership experience, including a successful track record of scaling businesses, leading organizational transformations, and creating enterprise value across the U.S. and UK markets.

DeLuca most recently served as CEO of Six Degrees, a UK-based managed cloud and technology services provider, where he led the company through its successful acquisition by Claranet in June 2026. Previously, he served as CEO of Sapphire Systems, an enterprise software and digital transformation services provider, guiding the company’s transformation and successful sale to NTT DATA Business Solutions in 2023. Earlier in his career, DeLuca spent a decade leading Logicalis US, where he drove significant growth and established the business as a leading technology solutions provider in the North American market.

DeLuca will lead Coretelligent’s next phase of development, with a focus on delivering exceptional client experiences, strengthening operational excellence, and driving sustainable, profitable growth. The company will continue building on its established managed IT and cybersecurity expertise while advancing capabilities in cloud, automation, and AI to help clients address evolving business and technology challenges.

“Coretelligent has a strong foundation, talented people, and an important role to play in helping our clients navigate an increasingly complex technology landscape,” said DeLuca. “Our opportunity is to build on those strengths by putting clients at the center of everything we do, raising the standard of service we provide, and bringing forward innovative solutions that create meaningful business value. I’m looking forward to working with our team to strengthen the fundamentals of our business, consistently deliver on our commitments to clients, and build a stronger Coretelligent for the future.”

“Vince brings an exceptional combination of industry expertise, operational discipline, and proven leadership in building and transforming technology services businesses,” said Adam Garcia Eveloff, Partner at Norwest Equity Partners and a member of Coretelligent’s board of directors. “His track record of developing high-performing organizations, strengthening client relationships, and driving sustainable growth makes him the right leader to guide Coretelligent through its next chapter. We are excited about the opportunities ahead under his leadership.”

About Coretelligent

Coretelligent is a provider of managed IT and technology solutions, specializing in IT strategy, cybersecurity, compliance, cloud services, data management, and emerging AI and automation capabilities. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in the Boston metropolitan area, Coretelligent serves clients nationwide and has been a Norwest Equity Partners portfolio company since 2021. For more information, visit www.coretelligent.com.

Media Contact

Jennifer Blazauskas, Coretelligent, 1 855-841-5888, marketing@core.tech, www.coretelligent.com
Twitter, LinkedIn

View original content:https://www.prweb.com/releases/coretelligent-appoints-vince-deluca-as-chief-executive-officer-302916493.html

SOURCE Coretelligent