MUMBAI/NEW DELHI, March 31 -- India Inc. is ramping up spending on research and development (R&D), but a lack of validation and assured demand is preventing many of those innovations from reaching the market.

The bottleneck is not invention but adoption: new technologies often struggle to find buyers without policy backing, institutional trust or global precedent, leaving companies with rising R&D investments but limited commercial payoff, industry executives said at a panel discussion during the Mint India Investment Summit held last week.

Manufacturing firms, in particular, are increasing R&D spending, but say the absence of validation, at home and abroad, is becoming a key roadblock.

"R&D is growing leaps and bounds.but not in the c...