For decades, India imported ideas more than it exported them. But last fiscal year’s government data tells a different story. According to the Department of Science and Technology (DST), India now ranks 38th in the Global Innovation Index among 139 economies, holds the 6th position globally in patent filing activity, is 3rd in scientific research publications worldwide, and has built the 3rd largest startup ecosystem on the planet, behind only the United States and China.
The Centre is also putting serious money behind this. The Union Cabinet approved the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme on July 1, 2025, committing a staggering ₹1 lakh crore over six years to pull private sector companies into R&D, a scale of science investment India has never attempted before.
Moreover, the National Quantum Mission (NQM), funded at ₹6,003.65 crore over eight years, now has all four of its Thematic Hubs—at IISc Bengaluru, IIT Madras, IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi—fully operational, bringing together 152 researchers from 43 institutions across 17 states.
India is also building its own AI capabilities. BharatGen, the country's sovereign Generative AI initiative, is being developed to understand and generate content across all 22 Indian languages, an answer to the Western AI systems that were built largely without India's 1.4 billion voices in mind.
Supercomputing and particle physics
The indigenously built PARAM Rudra, powered by C-DAC's homegrown Rudra servers and manufactured entirely in India, was commissioned at IIT Bombay in January 2026, adding 3 Petaflops of computing power to India's growing national grid that now totals 47 Petaflops across 38 locations.
Perhaps the most quietly remarkable milestone from last year came from particle physics. India was a recipient member of the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, awarded to the CMS experiment at CERN for its landmark measurements of the Higgs boson.
However, as per DST, the most significant long-term development is the ₹1 lakh crore RDI Scheme, which represents India's most ambitious attempt to close the gap between public and private R&D spending. India's R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP has historically hovered around 0.6–0.7 per cent, compared to 2–3 per cent in advanced economies.
The RDI Scheme's design, targeting Technology Readiness Levels of 4 and above and establishing a Deep-Tech Fund of Funds, specifically targets the "valley of death" between lab research and commercial deployment. This is the structural reform that looks to determine whether India's ranking improvements translate into industrial and economic outcomes.