After making impressive strides in innovation, GCCs, operating out of India, should also align themselves with national goals. India has moved up the ladder on innovation, and the private sector, too, should now increase the spending on R&D, seeing it as an investment, and not merely an expenditure. In the next ten years, it’s hoped, India will be among the Top Ten nations in innovation. With more patents are now being granted, they also need to be deployed, and more work needs to be done on this. After bringing about a mindset change, the next step for startups is to find markets, including international markets, and the recently-concluded Bharat Innovates event was an important step in this direction. This was stated by Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government, Prof Ajay Sood, in an interview with BW Businessworld.
Speaking on innovation in the Indian context, Sood said: “In Innovation, what matters is STEM education. India produces 2.8 million STEM graduates per year, which is probably one of the highest in the world. In the last twelve years, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we have launched various Missions – like the the Quantum Mission, AI Mission, Green Hydrogen Mission, Critical Minerals Mission… This concerted approach has also helped us take our innovation index high. We hope to do even better in the coming years.”
Asked if there are targets, he said, “I would not like to put a number, but we hope that India becomes one of the Top Ten countries, say, in the next ten years.”
On R&D spend by the private sector, Sood said: “Businesses have to see R&D as investment for the future. If Indian products have to compete outside, they cannot be lacking in technology. For this, R&D is needed. This realisation was not there earlier. That is why the investment has been 35-40 per cent. Once they know that they have to compete globally, they will invest more in frontier technologies, frontier R&D.”
Talking about India’s GCC success story, in response to a question, he said: “Right now we have 2,120 GCCs in the country. They employ almost 24 lakh professionals. These are high-end professionals. They generate around 100 billion US dollars in revenue. Now, we have to see how to incentivise so that GCCs align with our National Missions. We need to interact with GCCs, make them partners in our National Missions.
Plus, they should go beyond metros, too. That will be advantageous for them, too. We also need to strengthen Special Economic Zones in the country by having a few GCCs there, and making sure that what is relevant for India works -- we can incentivise them to work on it.”
On the cultural shift that startups have brought about, and what more possibly can further be done, Sood said: “Procurement or the possibility of helping startups’ products find a market in India and help them to do that abroad is important. Bharat Innovates was one such effort. Bharat Innovates has been done to showcase our products so that the Europeans can see what we have, what is our strength and invest in them. That opens the possibility of deals being signed, so our startups find a market. This is one big step.”
On patents, in response to a question, he said: “Patent granting has sped up in the last two years – more people have been put in India's patent cells. This is a very welcome sign. What people need to do more is to make sure that patents are not only granted, but they are also deployed. Patent granting is only part of the story. An equal effort has to be made in finding the right use of that patent. And that will not happen automatically; the inventors have to be proactive. A mindset change would mean how do we make a patent deployed – that is the ultimate success.”
Full interview to be published soon. |
