India should focus more on mkt-based research: Infosys cofounder K Dinesh

India must boost R&D spending and focus on market-oriented research to compete globally, as ISF honours six scientists with the Infosys Prize 2025, says K Dinesh

Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) gave away the annual Infosys Prize in six    categories — economics, engineering and computer science, humanities and social sciences, life sciences, mathematics and physical sciences last week. K Dinesh, Infosys cofounder and president of ISF, talks with Avik Das on the sidelines of the event on how to improve India’s research ecosystem. Edited excerpts:

 

What are your views on the Indian research ecosystem and when do you see more Indian researchers and scientists getting the ISF award?

 

Our focus from 2009 onwards is on building the best available and showcasing them as role models to India. So based on that, we have awarded 98 people till last year and some of them have reached even higher levels of accomplishment. So, we want to make sure that the ecosystem that is developed is building research and excellence as a habit rather than just knowledge-based research. While some Indian researchers are moving towards excellence in research as you can see in some of the people who are winning, we need to bring that on a larger scale. That will also happen when the allocation to research and development (R&D) improves as a percentage of the GDP and our hope is that both industry and the government will do higher level research, and put in higher allocation to create that research ecosystem which will contribute to higher levels of performance. If India needs to compete in the global market, it will have to produce international class research products and solutions.

 

How do you think the research system in India can improve?

 

Research needs to cope up with what is required for the industry and our university system also needs to gear up for that. That requires close focus on what objectives they have for different areas of research and setting goals for them to achieve market-oriented research. Mentoring is also critical as it brings the required vertical and cross-industry knowledge required for them to succeed.

The Infosys awards now focus on early career researchers than mid-career ones so that many youngsters will come and they have a lot more focus and time required for them to produce impactful results.

 

Have you seen any positive impact from this award?

 

We have seen it in some of the areas but it needs to percolate more. Take the example of Shyam Gollakota, who was honoured in 2024 for smartphone-based affordable health care tools for low-income countries, battery-free computing and communication and augmentation of human auditory sensing with artificial intelligence (AI).

In our environment, when will this kind of a solution be seen as a possibility and how to do this and what are the practical issues that you face. It is here that the startup culture is important, which picks up such emerging ideas that will come out. It then looks for solutions, proven concepts and brings that to the market.

 

How do you think India can move from knowledge-led research to more market-based ones?

 

The key is allocation of funds. Second, our universities and startup ecosystem need to exchange people from industry to give the knowledge and speed up the process of building products. Only people inventing face the market realities and make products required for the markets. Hopefully, they will learn from committing the same mistakes. So that's where it is going to happen because market-led research is very important and we lag there.