Build a Research-to-Innovation Ecosystem Around India’s Universities

Great economies do not grow only by adopting technologies developed elsewhere. They also discover, invent, commercialize, and build new technologies themselves.

India has world-class scientists, engineers, universities, IITs, national laboratories, technology companies and startups. But these capabilities do not always operate as one connected innovation system.

A university researcher may make an important discovery without having the funding, industry partner, intellectual-property support or entrepreneurial expertise needed to turn it into a product. Companies may need solutions to difficult technical problems without having strong relationships with university researchers. Promising technologies can also encounter a funding gap between laboratory research and commercial deployment.

India has begun addressing these issues through the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF). Established under the ANRF Act 2023, it has a mandate spanning research, innovation and entrepreneurship, and its current programmes explicitly seek stronger links among universities, laboratories, industry and startups.

The next step should be to build a complete national ecosystem that connects:

Research → Discovery → Technology → Prototype → Commercialization → Startup or Industry Adoption → Global Scale

India should make major universities and research institutions centres of both knowledge creation and innovation.

Competitive research funding should support fundamental science because transformative discoveries often emerge before their commercial applications are known. Researchers should be able to pursue ambitious, long-term and high-risk questions based primarily on scientific merit.

At the same time, India should dramatically strengthen the pathways that take promising discoveries beyond the laboratory.

Universities should develop professional technology-transfer and commercialization capabilities that help researchers evaluate discoveries, protect intellectual property where appropriate, find industry partners, license technologies and create startups.

Researchers who want to commercialize their work should have access to incubators, prototype facilities, shared laboratories, regulatory expertise, entrepreneurial mentors and early-stage capital.

Universities should also be encouraged to create Industry-University Research Centres in areas where India has major economic, technological or societal opportunities—such as AI, semiconductors, advanced materials, biotechnology, medical technology, agriculture, energy, water, manufacturing, robotics and climate technology.

Companies should help define real research problems and co-fund appropriate projects while universities preserve academic independence and continue pursuing fundamental research.

India’s ANRF is already moving in this direction. Its Catalytic Partnership Program supports large-scale research institutions through combinations of academia, industry, private capital, and philanthropy, with explicit pathways to industry deployment, startup incubation, and technology commercialization.

Fund the Entire Innovation Journey

Research funding should recognize that different stages require different kinds of capital.

Fundamental research may require grants with long time horizons.

Applied research and prototypes may require competitive grants jointly funded with industry.

Demonstration and commercialization may require long-term loans, venture capital, corporate investment, or government procurement.

India’s new RDI Fund already provides an important mechanism for the later stages. It has an approved outlay of ₹1 lakh crore over six years and is designed to encourage private-sector R&D and finance higher-readiness technologies, including through long-term financing and investment structures.

The objective should therefore be to eliminate the gaps between these stages:

Research Grant → Prototype Funding → Industry Partnership → Commercial Capital → First Customer → Scale

Government does not need to finance every successful technology indefinitely. It should help build the environment in which private capital increasingly takes over as commercial viability becomes clearer.

Measure Research by Knowledge and Impact

Not every research project should produce a company or patent.

Fundamental research should continue to be evaluated through scientific quality, originality, discovery, publications and contribution to knowledge.

But applied programmes should also measure what happens after research is completed: technologies developed, prototypes demonstrated, patents licensed, industry adoption, startups created, follow-on private investment and problems solved.

Universities should be rewarded for both:

Creating new knowledge + Turning appropriate knowledge into real-world impact

The United States provides a useful example of how universities, government research funding, and private industry can operate as parts of the same innovation ecosystem.

The U.S. National Science Foundation supports fundamental research while also operating programmes specifically designed to connect academic researchers with industry. Its Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers bring companies, universities and government together around shared research challenges. Industry members help fund research and interact directly with university researchers, creating pathways from academic research toward industrial application.

NSF reports that its engineering portfolio currently supports 40 Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers across areas including biotechnology, manufacturing, microelectronics, and energy technology.

The important lesson is not that every university should become a commercial laboratory. It is that fundamental science, universities, industry, entrepreneurship and capital should be connected rather than operating in separate worlds.

India now has many of the institutional pieces needed through ANRF, universities, national laboratories, startups, industry, and the new RDI Fund.

The opportunity is to connect them into one continuous innovation system:

Discover → Research → Develop → Demonstrate → Commercialize → Scale → Reinvest in the next discovery

India should not only produce the scientists and engineers who develop the world’s technologies. It should increasingly be where those technologies are discovered, owned, commercialized, and built.