Dubai’s RDI grants initiative: Empowering deep tech research with global impact

Dubai is putting real resources behind deep tech by backing founders and researchers with grants and giving them a real-world testbed to scale. Long known as a hub for tourism, real estate, and transhipment, it’s now gearing to become what Pranav Sharma, Senior Executive Officer, Agna Capital calls “the centre of the future-tech driven global economy”.

With global economic and technological power shifting from the west to the east, Sharma notes, the UAE is uniquely placed to leverage its capital, regulatory flexibility, and global talent pool to drive this transition — and Dubai intends to claim its place with the Dubai Research, Development & Innovation (RDI) Grant Initiative.
Over the past decade, Dubai has made substantial efforts to diversify from hydrocarbons and lay the foundation for a knowledge-driven innovation economy. As Dr. Marwan Al Zarouni, CEO, Dubai Blockchain Center and CEO of AI at the Dubai Department of Economy & Tourism says, this journey has been powered by a suite of aligned initiatives:

Strategy: The D33 agenda - the broader set of economic goals that aim to make Dubai one of the top four global technological hubs by 2033.

Innovation hubs: Dubai Future Foundation, Area 2071, DIFC Innovation Hub, Dubai Science Park, Dubai Internet City, Dubai Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Sandbox Dubai, and Mohammad Bin Rashid Foundation that include accelerators, incubators, labs and regulatory sandboxes.

Specific initiatives: Nurture 30 unicorns by 2033 and support 400 high potential companies meant to build and scale promising deep tech start ups from Dubai.

Central to this vision is Dubai’s effort towards building a robust Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) ecosystem. For Dr. Ananth Bharadwaj, an Assistant Professor at the BITS Pilani Dubai Campus (Birla Institute of Technology, a premier Indian institute and winner of an RDI grant for wireless charging solutions for drones), “a core issue for deep tech innovation globally is the lack of funding, networks, and collaboration at the ideation stage or what is called pre-seed in the funding world. This is especially true for university-based ecosystems and researchers”.With the RDI grants, he adds, he has a unique opportunity to not only experiment with his ideas but ultimately implement his vision in India’s mountainous regions, to start with.

What are RDI grants and why do they matter?
Dubai’s RDI Grant initiative under the Dubai Future Foundation was launched in September 2024 by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to fund high-impact research aligned with Dubai’s strategic priorities. It aims, in the words of His Highness Sheikh Hamdam (Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Future Foundation), “to make Dubai one of the most future‑ready cities in the world, and the most prepared to harness scientific research to achieve impactful accomplishments”.

Grants range from AED 500,000 to AED 1.5 million per project with 12–36-month timelines. The Principal Investigator (PI) must be affiliated with a Dubai-based university or research institute; international partners are encouraged; and at least 50% of grant spends must occur in Dubai. The focus areas for the current (second) cycle include Cognitive Cities and Health and Life Sciences, for which the next cohort of funded projects is underway. This is expected to match or expand on Cycle-1’s slate, with an aim to move more prototypes from lab validation into real world use cases.

The first cycle funded 24 projects across 13 Dubai based institutions involving 200 researchers working on foundational deep-tech problems. Think AI, robotics and mobility, health and life sciences, and advanced materials.

India x Dubai: A practical corridor for deep tech
For Sharma, this initiative closely aligns with India’s deep tech ecosystem spanning AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing, clean tech, and advanced manufacturing. The idea is simple: Make in India, Scale in Dubai. Rooted in India’s scientific expertise and nurtured through Dubai’s funding, ecosystem, and talent exchange, it creates a powerful cross-border opportunity: a publicly-funded innovation corridor linking India’s research strengths with Dubai’s test-bed economy. The corridor is further strengthened by IIT Madras setting up its first international flagship centre in Dubai.

According to Bharadwaj, “for deep tech researchers, initial non-dilutive funding is rare. The Dubai RDI grants give you that early boost”. He further adds that while it is still an early phase in the grant programme, there is an opportunity to be embedded in an entire ecosystem of mentors, labs, funding and potentially future scale-up pathways. Bharadwaj is already thinking of setting up a start-up to scale his ideas once his research achieves its target.

Opportunities for Indian deep-tech startups
For India-linked researchers and founders, the RDI programme offers concrete collaboration and funding routes.:

• Eligibility: While the principal investigator (PI) must be affiliated with a Dubai based institution, Indian researchers and startups can collaborate as co-investigators or implementation partners.
• Strategic positioning: Dubai is inviting applications from sectors where India is strong: AI, med-tech, mobility, climate and agri-tech.
• Funding timeline: Each project is expected to span 12 to 36 months, providing stable, long-term capital that’s not typically available in early-stage Indian deep-tech ecosystems.
• Institutional support: Leading Dubai institutions like Dubai Future Labs and DIFC Innovation Hub, Area 2071, Sandbox Dubai etc are involved, providing ready collaborators for Indian spin-offs and university-linked startups.

A shared innovation future
According to Sharma, India’s recent public R&D push — a government-backed ₹1 lakh crore programme aimed at scaling industrial research — sits alongside the UAE’s own industrial drive, ‘Operation 300bn’, creating aligned incentives for joint tech development. The emergence of institutional pillars such as the IIT Madras Global Dubai Centre underlines that academic capacity is strengthening in Dubai to work on advanced technology.

Meanwhile, the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and the UAE is enabling institutional pathways for IP transfer, R&D localisation, and sovereign capital flow, laying the groundwork for deeper bilateral deep tech programmes. For example, Indian deep tech firms are widening their footprints: space-tech companies such as Dhruva Space and St Advanced Composites are moving toward international missions and partnerships that could plug into Dubai testbeds and commercial routes. Taken together, these moves point to a lab-to-city-to-market arc: projects seeded by RDI grants in Dubai could be validated in real world pilots and then scaled across regional markets.

And perhaps, somewhere in the near future, Bhardwaj’s wireless-powered drones discovered in Dubai’s labs will be flying not only over Dubai’s smart city, but also India’s remote mountainous areas and Africa’s conflict-ridden geographies — a lab-to-city-to-world arc that the RDI grants are specifically designed to catalyse.

This article is contributed by Shraddha Bhandari.

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