India, April 7 -- Over the past decade, India has recorded visible gains in global innovation metrics, rising from 81st in 2015 to 38th in the Global Innovation Index 2025 and ranking 1st among lower-middle-income economies. India is also identified by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) as an innovation overperformer for the 15th consecutive year.

Yet these gains sit within a more difficult reality. As global innovation becomes more concentrated in large firms, frontier clusters, and capital-intensive technologies, the quality of innovation systems matters as much as their visible outputs. India's output rank (32nd) now exceeds its input rank (52nd), suggesting that it converts a relatively thin input base into measurable ou...