In 2004, I arrived in Melbourne from India with two suitcases and no network to speak of. This morning, twenty-two years later, it was a surreal moment to open the Herald Sun and see me featured on page seven holding an Australian flag and an Indian one, alongside Australia Indian entrepreneurs talking about the Prime Minister of India arriving in the city.
I've been working as a bridge between the two countries through programs, cohorts and partnerships for years. This moment carries special significance.
Faster than Taylor Swift
If you missed the news: Prime Minister Narendra Modi lands in Melbourne today for the third India–Australia Annual Leaders' Summit, with bilateral discussions with Prime Minister Albanese covering defence and security, trade and investment, education, mobility and people-to-people ties. On Thursday, a mega community event "Melbourne Meets Modi" is expected to fill Marvel Stadium with 35,000 to 40,000 people. Tickets sold out in hours; and the Herald Sun ran the comparison every Melburnian understands: faster than Taylor Swift.
Sit with that for a second. A stadium this city reserves for grand finals and global superstars, selling out for a state visit.
What the roar actually is
Here is the line I gave the Herald Sun, and the one I want to expand on:
"For our business community, this is an opening siren. The moment both nations take the big leap from promise to partnership."
Melburnians know exactly what an opening siren means. It’ starts something. The premiership isn't won at the first bounce. The siren announces that the contest is now live, and everything from here on counts.
That's precisely where the Australia–India relationship stands. The promises have been extraordinary: a trade agreement in force, tariffs eliminated, summits annualised, ministers exchanging visits at a pace unimaginable a decade ago. But promises are the pre-game. Partnership with actual companies crossing, real joint ventures forming, true capability moving in both directions is the game. This week, the siren sounds in front of forty thousand witnesses.
The infrastructure in the stands
The number in the article that deserves attention isn't just the ticket count. It's this one: the Indian diaspora is Australia's largest overseas-born community, now more than 971,000 people.
This is the largest overseas-born community in Australia of nearly a million people carrying dual identity, as I put it in the article, ‘carrying both the Australian and Indian flags in their hearts.’ It gives this relationship something most trade partnerships never get.
And governments, have moved to match it. A trade agreement in force. Tariffs eliminated. Leaders' summits annualised. A CEOs Forum bringing business leaders from both nations into one room this very week. The direction has been set at the very top of both democracies which is what makes this moment different from every previous wave of Australia–India optimism.
When those forty thousand people roar on Thursday, what you'll be hearing is belief meeting policy. That combination has never existed in this trade relationship before.
What happens after the flags come down
The summit will produce communiqués. The CEOs Forum will produce handshakes and headlines. All of it matters, and I'll be there when the trade and mobility discussions happen where announcements either become architecture or evaporate.
But here is the honest truth, learned from years inside like this one: summits set direction; they don't move companies. Between the communiqué and the customer sits a missing layer. The platform that converts frameworks into founders actually crossing, partnership deals, pilots signed momentum into market entry. I call it the execution layer. It's the layer The Big LEAP was built to be: when the leaders sign the frameworks, someone has to walk the first hundred businesses through the door.
The best decade of the Australia India superhighway starts this week.
The siren has sounded. Game on.
"Welcome to Melbourne, Prime Minister."
Jasmine Batra is the founder of The Big LEAP Accelerator, the AusIndustry-backed Australia–India Tech & Innovation Superhighway program. She was featured and quoted in the Herald Sun's coverage of Prime Minister Modi's visit — "Marvel-lous roar for Modi," Herald Sun print edition, page 7, Wednesday July 8, 2026. Next on the blog: six months of zero tariffs, and the wall behind the wall.
