In February 2025, Pune-based KPIT Technologies transferred its sodium-ion battery technology to Trentar Energy Solutions, which is now building a 3 GWh manufacturing facility around the platform.
The chemistry promised energy density between 100 and 170 Wh/kg, alongside nearly 80% capacity retention across 3,000-6,000 cycles.
(Sign up for THEdge, The Hindu’s weekly education newsletter.) The announcement of the project was significant not simply because India had produced another battery technology, but because the entire research-to-commercialisation chain had actually worked.
Thus, a functional technology had shifted from laboratory-scale development to industrial deployment within roughly fourteen months.
In India’s scientific ecosystem, that is still rare.
India produces growing pools of highly trained scientific talent, files thousands of patents every year, and expands research capacity through institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and publicly funded laboratories.
Yet only a small fraction of that research ultimately converts into large-scale industrial value.
The numbers behind India’s research ambitions In the realm of research, India’s Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) remains approximately 0.64-0.66% of GDP, significantly below major scientific economies.
On the other hand, China spends over 2.4% of GDP on R&D.
While the United States spends around 3.5%, South Korea exceeds 4.5% and Israel spends over 5% of their GDP.
However, researchers argue that the problem is not only the size of India’s R&D spending, it is also the structure of that spending.
In India, nearly 60-64% of R&D expenditure still comes from the government sector, including central agencies, state institutions, higher education institutions, and public sector enterprises.
While the private industry contributes roughly around 36%.
However, in countries such as the U.S., China, Japan, and South Korea, the ratio is reversed.
Business enterprises drive the majority of R&D spending and play a dominant role in commercial innovation.
This imbalance has created what many researchers describe as India’s “translation gap”, a persistent inability to move scientific discoveries from laboratory proof-of-concept to scalable industrial deployment.
Venkateswaran, Visiting Professor at IISER Mohali, argues that India’s scientific ecosystem remains structurally fragmented.
As per him, Indian industrialists tend to become involved in scientific research only at a later stage when commercial feasibility comes into sight and the element of technical risk is already minimised.
He said, “Industry does not generally indulge in long gestation, high risk fundamental or translational research.” He said, “Industrial units prefer technology acquisition or in-house incremental research and development activities.
Public labs and bodies like CSIR still carry out major early-stage scientific risks.
The pattern is thus repeated as follows: Science is developed by public bodies; while commercial gains go to foreign or private sector.” ‘Valley of death’ in Indian science Policy reports from NITI Aayog, The Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser and the Ministry of Science and Technology have constantly drawn attention to the issue which is internationally recognised as the “valley of death”—the challenging phase between discovery in the laboratory and commercially viable products.
During this phase, technologies need infrastructures, translational funding, manufacturing validation, regulation clarity, and patient capital.
India’s ecosystem is still deficient in this middle level.
Ramgopal Rao, Vice-Chancellor of the BITS Pilani University Group and former Director of IIT Delhi, stated that the country tends to get stuck at the stage of “paper, patent or prototype.
Commercialisation happens only when someone decides to take the tough middle phase on their shoulders,” he stated.
According to Prof.
Rao, industry participation in India comes into play only when there is evident commercial value.
“An ideal situation would be one where industry comes into the picture much earlier with problem formulation, manufacturability, testing procedures, and cost targets in the very design of research,” he opined.
In his opinion, India does not have translational institutions dedicated to the process.
“We need institutions which bridge the gap between university and industry having common facilities, professional management, IP services, industrial problems, funding, etc., to take the technology from TRL 3 to TRL 8,” he explained.
Without such institutional arrangements, “India risks becoming a country which produces science while letting other countries profit from it.” Why Indian industry avoids early-stage scientific risk Various reasons have been offered for why Indian companies are reluctant to engage in pioneering science.
Risk aversion and short-term returns An expert on the condition of anonymity said, “Historically, Indian companies were structured along lines of process optimisation, efficiency gains, service provision, and technology adaptation, not cutting-edge scientific discovery.
After the economic liberalisation policies of 1991, several industries embedded themselves within global supply chains via licensing, outsourcing, and contract manufacturing, and not innovation.
For example, in pharmaceuticals, India became a global leader in contract manufacturing and contract research but lagged behind in drug discovery.” “After economic liberalisation, the emphasis was on integration into the global economy and foreign collaboration, not building domestic capacity”, he said.
This created what he calls “dependent learning paths,” where Indian firms often operate downstream in global innovation chains rather than leading them.
Weak translational infrastructure Experts say that India has islands of excellence — IITs, IISc, IISERs, certain CSIR labs — but lacks large-scale shared translational infrastructure.
Pilot plants, advanced testing facilities, technology transfer offices, manufacturing validation centres, and industry-linked translational ecosystems remain limited.
Many researchers say technologies die not because the science fails, but because no institution exists to carry them through scale-up.
Fragmented policy architecture India has come up with several policies – BIRAC, Atal Innovation Mission, ANRF, PLI schemes, technology clusters, semiconductor missions, and the upcoming ₹1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation Fund.
However, according to researches, India’s innovation system still operates in silos.
Harish Kumar, Chairperson of Research and Assistant Professor at Great Lakes Institute of Management Gurgaon, puts it, “India today has ‘pipes but no plumbing’.” He asserts that most policies have been designed to be supply side interventions aimed at research output, without adequately addressing the industrial demand for deep tech innovations.
Where there needs to be movement is on the demand side.
Indian corporates should start writing big R&D cheques.” 4.
Minimal private sector R&D An expert on the condition of anonymity said that major scientific nations derive 65% to 75% of their R&D from private industry.
The involvement of India’s private sector in the field of R&D is quite low.
Industrial conglomerates undertake selective R&D investments in industries where they can see a commercial way forward.
Small & Medium Enterprises lack financial muscle to support years of research funding.
“Investments in deep-tech ventures are also hesitant.
Ventures in software platforms and consumer technology tend to receive greater attention due to quicker exit options compared to scientific ventures with longer gestation period’, he said.
Producing more researchers than the system can absorb? Aside from issues related to commercialisation, there is another issue now being discussed: Does India generate research-trained students faster than the Indian academic and industrial environments can accommodate them? Mr.
Venkateswaran disagrees with the claim that there is an overproduction of scientific manpower in India.
Using the example of manufacturing exports, he suggests that scientific brain drain should not be seen as failure.
“Why not think of the movement of talent as one for goods and services?” he asked.
However, on the other hand, he emphasized that India still lacks researcher density.
“Today, India has about 250–300 researchers per million population.
In China, there are over 2,000.
Russia even has over 2,700.
Even Iran’s researcher density is much higher than that of India.
We have terribly low researchers per million,” he said.
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