BRICS Business Magazine has announced the launch of BRICS+ Impact & Connectivity, an international initiative designed to identify and promote companies and projects from BRICS and the wider BRICS+ world that are already generating measurable economic, social, technological, cultural or infrastructural impact while strengthening ties between countries, markets and professional communities.
The first full cycle is scheduled for 2027. The initiative will bring together two formats: the international BRICS+ Impact & Connectivity Award and the BRICS+ Impact & Connectivity Conference.
The award will focus on medium-sized and large companies. The emphasis will be on the project itself — its results, international connectivity, scalability and the credibility of its data — rather than on the profile of the company behind it. The conference is intended to bring participants together with investors, development institutions, industry associations, cities, regions, experts and potential partners.
The initiative will consider projects from virtually any sector, including industry, technology, healthcare, education, finance, agriculture, logistics, energy, culture, digital services and the urban environment. There are two principal criteria: what measurable value a project creates and what connections it strengthens.
By impact, the organisers mean a tangible social, economic, environmental, technological, educational, cultural or infrastructural outcome. Connectivity refers to a project’s ability to link markets, companies, regions, institutions and professionals — through the localisation of production, joint research and development, investment, knowledge transfer, new supply chains or partnerships between cities.
One of the initiative’s co-founders is Akashdeep Singh, president of the Indian Business Council in Russia. In his view, following BRICS’s expansion, it is increasingly important to look beyond statistics and summit communiqués and focus on projects that are already working in practice: “BRICS does not become real only at summits. It becomes real where such connections are created.”
In an interview with BRICS Business Magazine, Mr Singh argues that this practical layer of co-operation is often precisely what businesses lack. Companies may see the potential of a promising market yet have little idea how to enter it, whom to trust or where to find partners. BRICS+ Impact & Connectivity is intended to make such proven pathways more visible and to give successful projects an international audience.
The initiative is being developed as a partnership. Alongside Akashdeep Singh, its co-founders are Veronika Zonabend, a social entrepreneur and co-founder of the Noôdome community; Arman Jilavian, and Alexey Anischenko, members of the Noôdome Board of Directors. The project is intended to bring together an international community, media and communications, strategic partnerships and business expertise.
BRICS Business Magazine will serve as the initiative’s principal media platform. At the same time, the magazine’s editorial work will remain separate from the organisational and commercial activities surrounding the award — an arrangement presented as one of the project’s core principles.
During 2026, the organisers plan to build the architecture of the first cycle: selecting the host country and city, identifying host partners, and establishing the expert council, jury, secretariat, criteria and timetable. In 2027 the programme is expected to move on to applications, expert assessment, interviews and project verification, the drawing up of a shortlist, the conference and the awards ceremony.
The longer-term ambition is to make BRICS+ Impact & Connectivity an annual platform that presents BRICS through specific companies, technologies, production facilities, universities, cities and partnerships — in other words, through projects that offer a tangible measure of how co-operation within the grouping works in practice.
