CMI brings its structured, data-driven evaluation framework to ET Edge's platform celebrating India's most impactful founders, CXOs, and innovation-led enterprises
New Delhi, June 2026 — Recognising India's most impactful new-age business leaders is not an exercise in popularity. It demands a process that is rigorous in design, transparent in execution, and credible enough to withstand scrutiny from the very leaders it seeks to honour. That is the standard the ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards 2026 has set — and it is the standard that Coherent Market Insights (CMI) has been appointed to uphold as the Official Research Partner for this prestigious national platform.
Scheduled on June 26, 2026 in Taj Palace, New Delhi, the ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards brings India's innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem together on one platform to recognise excellence, unlock opportunities, and spotlight the leaders shaping India's future. Anchored in the theme "Bharat Rising — Scale, Sustainability & Supremacy," the summit reflects a defining shift: India is no longer just a high-potential market, but a global innovation engine, where startups and new-age enterprises are driving job creation, building globally competitive solutions, and transforming industries at scale.
CMI's role at this summit is not ceremonial. It is the methodological backbone behind the identification and evaluation of India's Top 500 New Age Business Leaders from which the Top 100 are selected through deeper, multi-layered assessment as well as the comprehensive Bharat Growth Awards recognising both individual leadership excellence and organisational performance across India's most dynamic sectors.
The Research Framework: How India's New-Age Leaders Were Evaluated
The evaluation process began with a structured eligibility screening applied across a large sector of India's emerging business leaders. Candidates were assessed on leadership role, active India presence, business scale, growth trajectory, innovation orientation, public visibility, and compliance and reputation profile. Only leaders meeting these thresholds entered the scoring pipeline ensuring that the final recognition reflects earned credibility, not self-nomination or popularity alone.
From this, a Top 500 New Age Business Leaders list was constructed through comprehensive primary and secondary profiling drawing on company filings, annual reports, media coverage, investor signals, customer adoption data, and direct primary interviews with founders, CXOs, industry experts, and stakeholders. This profiling stage established a grounded picture of each leader's business trajectory, market impact, and industry visibility before any scoring began.
The final evaluation framework assessed leaders across ten weighted parameters, combining quantitative performance signals with qualitative leadership indicators. Leadership credibility and decision-making impact carried a 15% weight, as did execution capability and growth performance. Vision and strategic direction accounted for 12%, as did innovation leadership and business model differentiation, and business scale and financial strength. Market presence and Bharat penetration were weighted at 10%, reflecting the summit's explicit focus on leaders driving impact at the grassroots level of India's economy and not just in metropolitan hubs. Media presence, awards, and industry influence; customer metrics and brand perception; ecosystem contribution and partnerships; and governance, compliance, and risk profile completed the framework.
This weighting structure was designed to ensure that a high-growth founder from an emerging sector could be evaluated on equal terms with an established enterprise leader — with the balance deliberately tilted toward leadership quality and execution over scale alone.
Sector representation was built into the research design across FinTech and BFSI, D2C and consumer brands, SaaS and technology, HealthTech and wellness, EdTech and skilling, mobility and EV, FoodTech and QSR, e-commerce and retail, AgriTech and rural innovation, and manufacturing and Make in India ensuring the recognition reflects the actual breadth of India's new-age business landscape.
The process concluded with independent jury evaluation and multi-level validation, with senior editorial professionals and industry experts cross-verifying each shortlisted leader's profile against observable performance signals and publicly verifiable information.
Mr. Mohit Shrivastava to Present CMI's Methodology at the Summit
At the ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards 2026, Mr. Mohit Shrivastava, AVP – Research & Consulting at Coherent Market Insights, will take the stage to formally present the research methodology that powered the recognition. Attendees — spanning founders, CEOs, investors, policymakers, and ecosystem enablers — will gain a direct understanding of the evaluation design: how the parameters were structured, why the weightages were set as they were, and how the validation mechanisms ensured consistency and fairness across a diverse and large candidate pool.
A Platform Built for Bharat's Defining Decade
India's growth story is being rewritten by a new generation of builders from high-impact startups to category-defining brands and the next decade belongs to those who can scale with purpose and lead with innovation. The ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards 2026 is designed to identify and amplify exactly these leaders, and to do so through a process that is defensible, transparent, and grounded in evidence.
As this momentum accelerates, the need to identify, recognise, and amplify these success stories becomes critical. CMI's research partnership ensures that the credibility of the platform rests not on assertion, but on architecture — a structured, multi-stage framework that separates the builders who have truly earned their place from those who have simply been visible.
For CMI, this partnership is consistent with the firm's broader position across industries: that credible recognition, like credible market intelligence, begins with methodology.
About ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards 2026
The ET Now Bharat Growth Summit & Awards is a definitive recognition platform celebrating the individuals and organisations building India's innovation and business landscape — from early-stage startups to high-growth enterprises and visionary leaders — honouring those creating impact at scale while contributing to India's long-term, sustainable growth.
About Coherent Market Insights
Coherent Market Insights (CMI) is a global market intelligence and consulting firm delivering data-driven insights across diverse industries. Headquartered in India, with a presence in the U.S. and strategic partnerships across the U.K. and Japan, CMI supports clients in over 32 countries with 300+ full-time consultants.
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