New Delhi, Sep 23 India’s steady climb in the Global Innovation Index, from the 81st position in 2015 to the 39th in 2025, is not accidental but the outcome of deliberate policy choices, investments in entrepreneurship, and the spirit of India’s young innovators, Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday.
Currently, India hosts the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world, with more than 1 lakh government-recognised startups and over 100 unicorns.
Importantly, nearly 50 per cent of startups now originate from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, demonstrating the democratisation of entrepreneurship and India’s inclusive innovation story, the minister said at a NITI Aayog event.
Dr Singh emphasised that the innovation journey to Viksit Bharat demands global thinking and a reoriented mindset.
He underlined that both the government and the private sector must shed inhibitions and work in true synergy.
The minister acknowledged persistent challenges: lack of synergy across institutions, need for patient capital for deep-tech ventures, weak academia–industry linkages, uneven state-level innovation capacities, and gaps in intellectual property protection and commercialisation.
He noted that creating specialised interfaces on the lines of the BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council) and the IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre) in other critical areas of technology.
Such platforms are essential for fostering seamless collaboration between the government and the private sector.
According to him, government initiatives like the National Deep Tech Startup Policy and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) represent a fundamental shift towards building sovereignty in frontier technologies.
These efforts, he said, will reward risk-taking, creativity, and collaboration, ensuring that India is not merely a consumer of global technologies but a producer and leader.
"India’s innovation journey cannot rely on government alone. It requires a whole-of-nation approach—government providing the enabling framework, industry bringing scale and investment, academia driving knowledge creation, and young innovators supplying energy and creativity. Together, we can transform aspirations into achievements and realise the dream of Viksit Bharat by 2047," the minister noted.
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