NEW DELHI: India is weak in innovation but has the potential to improve its position with increase in investments in research, a European Union official said today.
"We have looked at a couple of third world countries and according to all rankings. India is a very weak innovator but of course, the potential is there. We do see a very quick evolution," Minister Counsellor in Delegation of EU to India Tania Friederichs said at an ICRIER event here.
At the event, ICRIER and European Business and Technology Centre released a joint white paper on India as an innovation economy.
The data in the paper showed that India's rank on the networked readiness index has plummeted to 91st position in 2016 from 68th in 2013.
Friederichs said Europe is going to start a programme that will focus on innovation with help of increased public funding.
"We will shift from the present programme which is called horizon 2020 to the next one which will be called horizon Europe. We will pay much more attention to innovation," she said.
"How are we going to that, to begin with by having much more public funding for innovation. It is a risk that we are undertaking," she added.
Friederichs said there is hardly any innovation possible without investment in research, and in India investment in this field is just 0.79 per cent of GDP compared to around 4 per cent invested by countries like Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
She said India is evolving very fast in terms of startup ecosystem which is an important element of the innovation ecosystem.
Co-author of the paper Alka Chawla said 45,057 patents were filed from India in 2017, of which only 29 per cent were by residents of the country.
She said there are gaps in enforcement of policies which needs to be addressed.
Chawla acknowledged efforts being taken by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to generate awareness on intellectual property rights.
She said there are innovators in India but they are not aware of the process to file patents.