This spring across New Delhi and Pune, Finnish industry and India’s leading engineering and design talent worked together in a new way.
The spring 2026 Demola programme at IIT Delhi and ADYPU, part of the Business Finland funded COFIRD consortium, connected Finnish companies with interdisciplinary student teams across two Indian universities. Spring pilot was done together with Konecranes.
This spring term Demola run 8 co-creation projects in two cities in India in collaboration with Konecranes, one of the world’s leading crafe manufacturers. Collaboration for Konecranes produced functional prototypes, market intelligence and top talent list for recruit purposes.
Demola manages the university interface on the companies’ behalf. Over the years it has built the relationships globally with universities such as IIT Delhi and ADYPU, worked with the faculties to make the projects credited parts of the degree programmes, and co-designed each project brief together with the partner company, for example Konecranes. Throughout the eight week programme Demola works alongside the student teams and gets to know them in practice, which lets it guide each company toward the teams worth meeting and, once the programme ends, recommend its TOP 5 talent for recruitment and supports partner organizations in the market intelligence interpretation work.
One of the richest outcomes is market intelligence. In Demola, market insights are interpreted through three lenses, and together they tell a company where the Indian market is heading.
Students’ lens, The Future. As tomorrow’s employees and customers, university students interpret the work from their own perspective, which points to where needs are forming.
Demola’s lens, The Global. Demola mirrors one partner’s results against the many it has gathered from other partners across countries.
The partner’s lens, The Inside Out. The company asks what the findings mean for it as an organisation, an interpretation that can only come from inside.
Just as important is what the work builds inside the company itself. Demola brings the partner’s own people, for example Konecranes’ India staff, into the co-creation and helps them interpret the student output from within their own organisation. Working this way strengthens the personnel’s own innovation capabilities, so the company comes away better equipped to run open, future oriented development on its own.
Demola’s activities in India this spring term were part of COFIRD programme, the Co-creation Platform for Finnish-Indian Research and Development. The Business Finland funded programme, coordinated by Tampere University, builds partnerships, and talent pipelines that let Finnish companies engage Indian universities at a low threshold. For a company such as Konecranes, working through COFIRD strengthens its R&D presence in India and builds lasting university and talent relationships rather than one off research engagements. What develops in India increasingly shapes global markets, and co-creation is a way to read those signals early.
The value is not a single project, but a continuous flow of co-creation between Finnish industry and India’s leading universities.
The approach being used in India draws on years of work in China, where Demola operated with local universities and international corporations to help foreign companies build genuine familiarity with local user behaviours and innovation dynamics — the kind of understanding that doesn't come out of a survey or a market report.
For a Finnish company in a foreign market, two things matter most. The first is insight into the market: co-creation gives an early, contextual read of where India’s future customers and their needs are heading, the kind of understanding that does not come from a survey or a market report. The second is access to verified talent on the ground: a company meets and evaluates students in real work, then recruits from a shortlist it has already seen perform, building its local team and presence at the same time.
Demola has run over 7,000 interdisciplinary teams across nearly 20 countries since 2008, and draws on years of work in China, where it helped foreign companies build genuine familiarity with local future customers and employees. The Embassy of Finland in New Delhi and Business Finland add strategic context and convening power. The spring 2026 programme has wrapped, but the collaboration continues: partners are taking the results into their own R&D, and Demola, together with its Indian university partners, is preparing the next cohort.
About COFIRD
Co-creation Platform for Finnish-Indian Research and Development (COFIRD) is a Business Finland funded consortium (2024 to 2026) coordinated by Tampere University. Partners include KONE, Konecranes, Demola Global, 3D Talo Finland, and Citynomadi.
About Demola Global
Demola is a Finnish innovation platform operating in nearly 20 countries. Since 2008, Demola has facilitated over 7,000 interdisciplinary student teams working on real challenges from industry partners. In India, Demola operates with IIT Delhi and ADYPU as part of the COFIRD initiative.
Share this event with anyone you think would be interested.
