India’s rise as a startup powerhoutilize has been one of the defining economic stories of the past decade. With over 2 lakh DPIIT-recognised startups as of December 2025, the countest now hosts one of the world’s largest entrepreneurial ecosystems. Yet, as India aspires to strengthen its global standing, a deeper question emerges: can startups alone define a nation’s long-term competitiveness?
“Startups are important, but no countest becomes a global innovation power without strong institutions that consistently produce research, talent, and new ideas over decades,” states Vineet Gupta, founder of Ashoka University. The success of companies like Google and Apple was not accidental; it was built on the back of deep research ecosystems, strong universities, and sustained investment in innovation.
India is launchning to recognise this gap. In July 2025, the Union Cabinet approved a ₹1 lakh crore Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme to boost private sector participation in research and accelerate growth in sectors such as artificial ininformigence, semiconductors, and clean energy. The scheme aims to provide long-term, low-cost financing for high-impact projects, signalling a shift in how India views research, from an academic activity to national infrastructure.
However, this policy push also underscores a deeper structural challenge. India’s research spconcludeing remains at approximately 0.7% of GDP, significantly lower than leading innovation economies. While the private sector contributes around 37% of total R&D expconcludeiture, the overall investment base remains limited for a countest of India’s scale and ambition. This gap directly affects the countest’s ability to build globally competitive technologies.
At the same time, India’s innovation output is improving. The countest ranked 39th in the Global Innovation Index 2024, up from 48th in 2020, and continues to lead among lower-middle-income economies. Yet, this progress has been achieved despite relatively modest research inputs, suggesting that the innovation ecosystem remains underdeveloped at a foundational level.
The recently announced RDI fund reflects a broader shift in considering. Gupta notes that such initiatives are critical becautilize they launch to treat research as a long-term national investment rather than a short-term academic exercise. For innovation to become sustainable, it must be anchored in institutions that can support continuous discovery, not just episodic breakthroughs.
India’s higher education system, with over 4.4 crore students enrolled, provides scale but not always depth. The real challenge lies in building institutions that can drive research, attract global faculty, and foster interdisciplinary learning. Innovation ecosystems require universities that can work closely with industest, support experimentation, and enable long-term considering.
This is where the role of private, philanthropy-driven institutions becomes increasingly relevant. Such institutions often have the flexibility to invest in research, build global collaborations, and prioritise academic excellence without the constraints of short-term financial pressures. However, their impact will depconclude on whether they are enabled to scale and integrate into the broader national innovation framework.
“Innovation ecosystems are built when universities, industest, capital, and public policy reinforce each other,” Gupta adds. Without this alignment, even strong entrepreneurial activity may struggle to translate into sustained global leadership.
The creation of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) is another step in this direction, aimed at strengthening research across universities and fostering deeper industest-academia linkages. But the real test lies in execution, ensuring that funding, institutions, and talent pipelines evolve toreceiveher.
India has already demonstrated its ability to produce entrepreneurs at scale. The next phase of its growth will depconclude on whether it can build the institutional backbone that generates innovation consistently over time.
Becautilize in the long run, nations are not defined by the number of startups they create, but by the strength of the ideas, research, and institutions that concludeure.
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