India’s Emerging Homegrown Innovation Ecosystem

Source: The Hindu

India’s Innovation Landscape: From Importer to Innovator

India is gradually developing the three institutional foundations of an innovation economy:

Technologies that were earlier largely imported are increasingly being developed domestically through collaboration among research institutions, industry and startups.
Patent filings increased from over 1.10 lakh in 2024–25 to more than 1.43 lakh in 2025–26, registering a 30.2% rise.
Domestic applicants now account for nearly 70% of patent filings.
However, patent filings alone do not indicate successful innovation:

India had just over 2.4 lakh patents in force in 2025, compared with 5.7 million in China, 3.5 million in the US and 2.1 million in Japan.
This points towards challenges involving patent grants, abandonment and commercialisation.

India spends just under 1% of GDP on R&D, compared with around 2.4% in China and 3.5% in the US.
Thus, the central challenge is moving from higher patent activity to commercially successful, technology-driven innovation.

Government-supported institutions continue to undertake long-gestation and strategically important research.
DRDO laboratories have demonstrated indigenous capabilities in advanced semiconductor technologies.

Private-sector R&D spending exceeded combined government R&D spending for the first time in 2024.
Private R&D is expected to account for around 55% of total R&D spending in 2025–26.
Increasing corporate investment can strengthen technology development and commercialisation.

India’s startup ecosystem is moving beyond conventional service platforms towards complex manufacturing, space technology, biotechnology and semiconductor applications.
More than $2.5 billion in deep-tech commitments have been made by members of the India Deep Tech Alliance.

The convergence of public research, corporate R&D and startups is creating an innovation pipeline from basic research to commercial applications.

DRDO’s Solid State Physics Laboratory (Delhi) and Gallium Arsenide Enabling Technology Centre (Hyderabad) developed GaN monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).
GaN technology is important for advanced radar, space systems, 5G/6G communications, electric-vehicle chargers and renewable-energy inverters.
India is among a small group of countries with this technological capability.
AGNIT Semiconductors, a spin-off from IISc’s Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, is translating indigenous GaN technology into commercial applications.

Bharat 6G Alliance members have made more than 7,700 patent filings across 5G and 6G technologies, including over 4,400 foreign filings.
Members also made nearly 3,000 technical contributions to 3GPP in the previous year, around 15 times the 2020 level.
Jio Platforms entered the top 20 international patent filers in the 2025 WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty rankings.

Ownership of patents and participation in global standards bodies are increasingly important because they determine who captures economic value from emerging technologies.

Pixxel Space is developing hyperspectral imaging technology, with six satellites in orbit and a planned constellation of 18–24 satellites.
Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 launch and Agnikul Cosmos’s work on reusable launch vehicles demonstrate growing private-sector capabilities in space technology.

ImmunoACT, incubated at IIT Bombay with Tata Memorial Centre, developed NexCAR19, India’s first indigenous CAR-T cell therapy.
The therapy has helped reduce the cost of advanced cancer treatment substantially compared with conventional CAR-T therapies.
Remidio Innovative Solutions uses smartphone-enabled retinal imaging and AI to detect conditions such as diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma.
Support from institutions such as BIRAC helps bridge the gap between scientific research and commercial healthcare applications.

These examples demonstrate how indigenous research can combine affordability, technological capability and commercial scalability.

Low overall R&D expenditure as a share of GDP.
Weak conversion of patents into commercially viable products.
Limited funding between patent development and the first paying customer — the “translational gap”.
Need for greater patent-examiner capacity and faster IP processing.
Lack of standardised technology-transfer terms for publicly funded intellectual property.
Need for stronger links between universities, government laboratories, industry and startups.

India needs to increase both public and private R&D investment while strengthening mechanisms for technology transfer and commercialisation.
Public research should generate foundational technologies, academia should nurture talent and research capabilities, and startups and industry should scale these technologies into markets.
The emerging ecosystem indicates a gradual shift from India being primarily a services and technology-implementing economy towards one capable of generating its own intellectual property, strategic technologies and industrial capabilities.