Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 – Indian Winners
Red Hat, the world’s leading open‑source solutions provider, announced the winners of its APAC Innovation Awards 2026 for India. The awards recognised five Indian entities – Adani Airport Holdings Limited, Bharti Airtel Ltd, the Department of Information Technology & Communication (DoIT&C) of the Government of Rajasthan, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) under the Ministry of Railways, and the Government of Rajasthan itself – for leveraging Red Hat open‑source technologies to solve complex business challenges, accelerate innovation and create lasting value.
Award Scope and Themes
The 2026 awards celebrated 32 winners across the Asia‑Pacific region and were grouped into six categories: Digital Transformation, Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud‑Native Development, Automation, Virtualisation and AI. The overarching theme, “Unlock what’s next,” highlighted organisations that turned technological complexity into opportunity through open, flexible foundations.
DoIT&C, Government of Rajasthan – Cloud‑Native Development
DoIT&C, responsible for IT consultancy, e‑governance, and infrastructure across Rajasthan, migrated from fragmented virtualised environments to a standardised, container‑based platform using Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Red Hat Application Foundation, Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, supported by Red Hat Consulting and Training. The transformation delivered a 30‑40% reduction in service rollout time, 25‑35% improvement in system availability and performance, automation of 50‑60% of infrastructure and operations, and approximately a two‑fold acceleration of application development and deployment cycles. These gains shifted the department from a reactive, maintenance‑heavy model to an agile, innovation‑focused ecosystem, enhancing governance efficiency and citizen services.
Adani Airport Holdings Limited – Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure & Cloud‑Native Development
Adani Airport Holdings Limited, which operates eight airports accounting for 24% of India’s passenger footfalls and 33% of air‑cargo traffic, required a scalable integration platform for more than 20 disparate airport systems. By adopting Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Application Foundation and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the company built a hybrid‑cloud platform that reduced system response times from seconds to microseconds. The enhanced platform provides travellers with real‑time, transparent information on wait times, baggage and flight status, enables faster detection of bottlenecks, reduces checkpoint congestion, improves overall airport efficiency, and supports quicker aircraft turnaround and on‑time performance.
IRCTC, Ministry of Railways – Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure & Cloud‑Native Development
IRCTC, the digital, catering and tourism arm of Indian Railways, runs the nation’s largest online ticketing platform, with approximately 89% of reserved railway tickets booked online. Indian Railways serves 2‑2.5 crore passengers daily and over 8 billion annually. To address capacity constraints during Tatkal and peak periods, IRCTC deployed a containerised, micro‑services platform on Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, orchestrated by Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. The modernised platform auto‑scales during demand spikes, improves infrastructure efficiency, accelerates application boot times, and enables faster release cycles. Automation of previously manual, error‑prone tasks also strengthens security posture and frees developer resources for higher‑value work.
Bharti Airtel Ltd – Virtualisation
Bharti Airtel Ltd, a global communications solutions provider with over 650 million customers across 15 countries and network coverage for more than two billion people, is re‑engineering its infrastructure to move from legacy, manual systems to open, flexible, cloud‑native platforms. The company leverages Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes, Red Hat Quay and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualisation to underpin its digital services such as recharge, billing and self‑service applications, thereby delivering enhanced customer experiences at massive scale.
Executive Quote
Daniel Aw, Vice President & General Manager, APAC, Red Hat, stated: “Enterprise technology is becoming more complex than ever, but success is no longer about how many new technologies an organisation adopts. What matters more is how effectively these solutions work together to address real business challenges and deliver tangible value. This year’s winners demonstrate that the organisations best positioned for long‑term success are those building open, flexible foundations that allow them to innovate on their own terms.”
Additional Information
Red Hat provides a portfolio that spans cloud, developer, AI, Linux, automation and application platforms, enabling any application to run anywhere—from datacentres to the edge. The press release includes standard forward‑looking statements and a disclaimer that the information is provided under an arrangement with Newsvoir.