Namaste 🙏,
Something significant is happening in India's commercial landscape, and it is moving faster than most professionals realise.
- The Prime Minister has called an enabling arbitration ecosystem a national priority.
- The Chief Justice of India has said India is no longer merely a user of arbitration but is becoming a thought leader in the global arbitration community.
- The Finance Minister has stated that commercial dispute settlements currently flowing to London and Singapore must come back to India.
These are not aspirational statements. They are signals of structural policy intent - backed by legislative reform, institutional investment, and a genuine urgency to establish India as the preferred seat for international commercial arbitration.
The global picture reinforces why this matters.
- The International Chamber of Commerce alone had USD 299 billion in pending disputes by end of 2025.
- The Singapore International Arbitration Centre's caseload grew by 227% over the last decade.
- Closer home, the Mumbai Centre for International Arbitration reported a 48% increase in new cases between 2023 and 2024.
- India's foreign direct investment crossed USD 1 trillion in 2024 - bringing with it an inevitable rise in complex, cross-border commercial disputes that require trained professionals to resolve.
Arbitration, in short, is no longer a niche legal specialisation. It is fast becoming one of the most consequential professional services sectors in the country.
And yet, the supply of trained, credentialled, globally benchmarked arbitration professionals in India remains deeply inadequate. The gap between the demand for quality arbitrators and the availability of qualified ones is, by any measure, a professional opportunity of considerable scale.
This is precisely the gap that the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Government of India, set out to address when we established the Centre of Excellence in Alternative Dispute Resolution (CEADR) and launched the IICA Certified Arbitration Program (ICAP).
With the successful conclusion of Batch-I and the assessment of first cohort of IICA Qualified Arbitration Professionals, we are now opening registrations for ICAP Batch II, commencing July 2026.
Over the next few days, I would like to share with you what this program involves, why it has been designed the way it has, and why this particular moment in India's arbitration journey makes the decision to get trained and certified one of the most consequential professional choices you can make.
I look forward to being in touch. Feel free to reach us at [email protected] for more information.
Warm regards,
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