India's AI dream is missing innovation, R&D spending

India's mushrooming artificial intelligence-focused startups are attracting a lot of buzz, but a lack of innovation and groundbreaking research means the country is way behind the US and China in the tussle for AI supremacy.

- Shouvik Das

This is a result of what the industry calls 'secondary' innovation—technologies that cannot be patented worldwide to influence global economics in the long run. Spending on foundational engineering, research and development (ER&D) work in AI is minuscule; at least five executives involved in AI-related work told Mint.

In November, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO's) annual report said that India was the sixth region in the world in terms of overall patent applications—behind China, the US, Japan, Korea and the European Union. However, the gap was stark—China filed 1.7 million patents through 2024, almost 3x more than the US, with 600,000 patents. India filed only 90,000 patents—5% of what China did.