Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology Dr. Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said that India’s innovation journey toward Viksit Bharat@2047 calls for a global outlook, reoriented mindset, and seamless government–industry collaboration.
Speaking at NITI Aayog headquarters during the release of its landmark report “Pathways to Progress: Analysis and Insights into India’s Innovation Story”, Singh emphasized the need to break mental barriers and adopt global benchmarks to accelerate innovation. The report was jointly released by Singh and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
Singh noted that early industry participation and equal investment partnership are essential for transforming startups into scalable ventures. Citing India’s vaccine success story as a model, he said that timely collaboration between government and private players enabled large-scale development and delivery.
Highlighting India’s rise in the Global Innovation Index from 81st in 2015 to 39th in 2025, the Minister credited deliberate policy reforms, entrepreneurship-friendly initiatives, and the spirit of young innovators. Today, India is home to over 1 lakh government-recognized startups and more than 100 unicorns, with nearly half originating from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities – a sign of inclusive growth and democratization of entrepreneurship.
Singh, however, acknowledged persistent challenges including gaps in patient capital for deep-tech ventures, weak academia–industry linkages, uneven state-level capacities, and slow intellectual property commercialization. He called for specialized interfaces in key technology areas, similar to BIRAC and IN-SPACe, to foster public–private collaboration.
Government initiatives like the National Deep Tech Startup Policy and Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), he said, represent a shift toward building sovereignty in frontier technologies, rewarding risk-taking and creativity to make India a global producer of innovation.
“The innovation journey cannot rely on government alone,” Singh asserted. “It requires a whole-of-nation approach – with government providing the enabling framework, industry bringing scale and investment, academia driving knowledge creation, and young innovators supplying energy and creativity.”
Senior officials from NITI Aayog, the Department of Science & Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Earth Sciences, and Atal Innovation Mission were present at the report release, which was positioned not merely as an assessment, but as a call to action to scale successful models, diversify incubators, and boldly invest in frontier R&D.