Asia to Emerge as Powerhouse; India Lags in Innovation

[prasad1]

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The growth of entrepreneurship in India has resulted in a plethora of startups and many large companies in recent years. Yet, the country continues to lag other Asian nations in innovation, according to a new research report.

In contrast, the report shows that Asia has driven a boom in recent years in terms of R&D spending, venture capital funding, academic publications, and patents. The report by Lux Research titled: “State of Innovation in Asia: Key Industries and Players Shaping Asia’s Innovative Ecosystem,” showed that in 2018, China, Japan and South Korea spent a combined $613 billion on R&D, bagging three of the top five spots globally.

While India will have to turn a new leaf to nurture an innovation ecosystem, the report predicts China and South Korea will leverage their robust and diverse innovation portfolios in solidifying their innovation positions regionally and globally. It however forecasts Japan’s innovation status will continue to shrink as the country eventually innovates itself into a corner of specialization as its antiquated innovation strategy struggles to keep pace with regional peers.

Meanwhile Singapore solidifies itself as the pinnacle R&D hub of the world, serving as a living laboratory for the development, prototyping, and testing of cutting-edge technologies in real-life scenarios. As Lux Research suggests, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand will continue to lay the necessary groundwork to be the next global innovation hot spot, with clear potential to be the world’s next unicorn haven.

“2018 was an exceptional year for China’s VC scene, with nearly 1,900 deals at an average deal size of $45 million,” the report said. For example, start-ups in Asia raised $107 billion in 2018, the report said, wherein China dwarfed all others with more than $85 billion alone. With those numbers, the country overtook the US for the top spot globally.

China had 1.6 million patent applications in 2018, representing a staggering 24% annual growth rate since 2008. In the same period, its share in Asia patent applications rose to 87% from 46%. South Korea saw 8% growth while it was 3% for Japan during the same period.

According to the report, despite having seen more than 10% growth rates over the past decade, India sees minimal patent application activity. A majority of the applications continue to come from locally registered foreign corporations, it said.

The report found that manufacturing beat all others when it comes to innovation in China. “Technologies like robotics and 3D printing are key areas of focus for domestic expertise as the country continues to ramp up its manufacturing capabilities and capacity,” it said. Manufacturing was followed by IT and chemicals and materials. In Japan, chemicals and materials led the wave of innovation while IT far surpassed every other sector in Singapore.

The report’s analysis finds that the center of innovation power is undeniably shifting toward the East as the transition toward a new world order is underway. The rise of Asia innovation is a global phenomenon and ripe with opportunities for everyone, not just the regional players.

The report observes India’s unique problem in lagging in terms of innovation. For example, while India’s government plans to create 100 million new factory jobs by 2022 and increase manufacturing’s share in the economy to 25% during the next three years. But, the Make in India program is yet to generate positive results. And Start-up India, amount to not much more than political exercises aimed at creating a short-term trigger.

There has been a dearth of the world-class products being produced from the startup ecosystem. This takes us back to what the founder of Infosys and IT scion, Narayana Murthy, said some time back: “There is not a single invention from India in the last 60 years that became a household name globally.”

He added that India had not produced “any idea that led to the earth-shaking invention to delight global citizens.”

A large proportion of Indian companies just don’t have the policy or resource capabilities to invest in innovation, according to a top World Bank official. But President M Venkaiah Naidu recently said in a public meeting that technological innovation is one of the key drivers to boost the economy, and stressed the need for investing more on R&D with focus on enhancing the intellectual capital through radically new approaches. He also appealed to Corporate India to develop a symbiotic partnership with universities and other academic institutions and contribute towards promoting research and development. As the report said, India’s domestic innovation ecosystem will depend heavily on universal adoption of the “innovate, patent, produce, and prosper” spirit, or else it will remain a tech playground for foreign players.

Asia to Emerge as Powerhouse; India Lags in Innovation

Despite huge potential, India continues to lag other Asian nations in innovation, according to a new research report.

www.cxotoday.com

 

[prasad1]

Indians live in the past. We glorify our mythical ancestors. We keep claiming that we invented the plane, IVF, cloning, etc, which may or may not be true. But it traps Indians from innovating.

Our past achievements instead of being a stepping stone have become an anchor around our neck, stopping our progress.

 

[prasad1]

India remained the world’s second largest arms importer during the period 2015-19, with Russia being the largest supplier though Moscow’s share of the Indian weapons market declined from 72% to 56%, a leading think tank that tracks arms transfers said in its annual report on Monday.

In its annual “Trends in international arms transfers 2019" report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) listed the world’s top five arms importers during the five-year period as Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Australia and China. Together, the five accounted for 36% of all arms imports, the report said.

Business News Today: Read Latest Business News, Live India Share Market News, Finance & Economy News | Mint

Business News: Read latest Business News headlines, LIVE share market news and updates, financial, economic and banking news from India & across the World on Mint.

www.livemint.com

 

[prasad1]

Information Technology can make a good claim to being India’s biggest and most successful industry. Tech hubs such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad contribute more than 13% of GDP. The country’s computer-science graduates are lauded worldwide: the bosses of two of America’s biggest tech firms, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Sundar Pichai of Google, were born and educated in India. It is also home to the fast, cheap Jio phone network which has made Indians the world’s biggest consumers of mobile data.

Yet although many Indians work with computers, very few are employed in building them. All the components used to create Jio’s network were imported. Bengaluru and Hyderabad live off dull business-process outsourcing and back-office management. Last year India imported $55bn of electronic goods. It exported just $8bn. The fact that India’s most celebrated industry depends entirely on imports in an era in which many countries are increasingly capricious about what goods they will allow to be exported makes some officials nervous. So India is attempting to build its own chips.

India is trying to create an indigenous chip-making industry

But China and Taiwan have more manufacturing expertise and better infrastructure

www.economist.com

 

[prasad1]

Not long ago, India’s underwhelming manufacturing industry was symbolized by its best-known car: the Ambassador. Modeled on a British car from the ‘50s, the boxy Hindustan Motors sedan dominated Indian roads for decades. Well into the 1990s, it was to India what the Lada was to the Soviet Union or the Trabant to East Germany, testimony to the technological shortcomings of an economy cut off from the world and shaped more by bureaucrats than by market forces.

Manufacturing in India still faces problems, including poor infrastructure, red tape, disconnectedness from global supply chains, and restrictive labor laws that have stymied the growth of business and limited economic dynamism. Nonetheless, over the past decade, hardly noticed by much of the world, the country’s auto industry has quietly scripted a success story. The land of the clunky Ambassador now houses one of the world’s major automobile industries. In terms of output—nearly 3.8 million cars a year, according to the most recent figures—India now nearly matches South Korea, an automobile powerhouse, and is on track to catch up with Germany.

This story holds lessons for Asia’s third largest economy. If automobiles, and by extension manufacturing more broadly, take off in India, the country may be able to generate many of the jobs required to employ the 12 million new entrants to the labor market each year. If manufacturing fails to thrive, India’s economic future could come into question, and along with it the country’s dream of emerging as a global power.


It’s hard to overemphasize the importance for India of getting manufacturing right. While the country’s world-class information-technology sector put it on virtually every global boardroom’s agenda, Indian manufacturing trails that of East Asian powerhouses such as South Korea and Taiwan, or even much smaller economies like Vietnam or Bangladesh. As a percentage of GDP, manufacturing in India contributes only about 17 percent, essentially unchanged from the amount it contributed at the advent of economics reforms back in 1991.

India has big ambitions for its place in the global order—and seeks to amp up its economy up to help deliver that transformation. The automobile sector has its own part to play in this vision. India’s “Automotive Mission Plan 2026,” a joint vision of the country’s government and car makers, aims for the auto industry to become one of the world’s top three, contribute 12 percent of India’s GDP, make up 40 percent of India’s manufacturing sector, and generate 65 million jobs by 2026. These goals are part of India’s larger quest to emerge as a major industrial power.

If it succeeds, it will likely secure the place it seeks as a leading global power. Like the Hindustan Motors Ambassador, India’s status as a country perpetually on the brink of arrival—but never quite there—might at last belong to history.

Can Indian Manufacturing Be the Next Chinese Manufacturing?

The country has quietly become the world's sixth-biggest auto producer. But it'll need to do better if it's to join the top tier of global powers.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[prasad1]

Majority of Hindu Indians have calluses from patting (one's) own back
To have excessively praised oneself for mythical achievement pf the past.

What Have You Done For the country Lately?

 

[mahe_magesh]

Less Governance is the key. The sarkari bapus need to be removed from the paths of innovation. For instance, out of 17 applications from Indian test kit manufacturers requesting regulatory licensing approvals, only three were able to get their licenses, so far. This is after 2-3 months of delay by ICMR and NIV, since the month of February. NIV had the brazeness to ask for FDA/EU certificates, when FDA itself was on an issuing spree of “emergency authorizations” without its validations. Further, the ICMR bapus procured 6,50,00 defective test kits from our enemy China in April, instead of encouraging and helping local talent. Government was enriching the enemy’s coffers. This was at the time when other nations were publicly reporting/returning faulty Chinese equipments. ICMR admitted only 4% of the Chinese kits worked! Do you now understand why India’s testing is around 0.5%. Compare this to Germany’s 2.5% or Iceland’s 10% or even the late comer, USA’s 1.8%. India tests about 250 people per million, while even the poor performer US tests 13,000 people per million. Without expanded testing capacity, Indians are fighting blind. Modi’s laid back way of management will not work in India.

 

[Jaykay767]

Less Governance is the key. The sarkari bapus need to be removed from the paths of innovation. For instance, out of 17 applications from Indian test kit manufacturers requesting regulatory licensing approvals, only three were able to get their licenses, so far. This is after 2-3 months of delay by ICMR and NIV, since the month of February. NIV had the brazeness to ask for FDA/EU certificates, when FDA itself was on an issuing spree of “emergency authorizations” without its validations. Further, the ICMR bapus procured 6,50,00 defective test kits from our enemy China in April, instead of encouraging and helping local talent. Government was enriching the enemy’s coffers. This was at the time when other nations were publicly reporting/returning faulty Chinese equipments. ICMR admitted only 4% of the Chinese kits worked! Do you now understand why India’s testing is around 0.5%. Compare this to Germany’s 2.5% or Iceland’s 10% or even the late comer, USA’s 1.8%. India tests about 250 people per million, while even the poor performer US tests 13,000 people per million. Without expanded testing capacity, Indians are fighting blind. Modi’s laid back way of management will not work in India.

Spot on and well articulated. Sane voice in the midst of the din raised by the sanghis.