India’s gross expenditure in R&D was forecast to reach US$ 96.50 billion in 2020. By 2022, R&D expenditure is targeted to reach at least 2 percent of the country’s GDP. IT spending in India is estimated to reach US$ 93 billion in 2021 (7.3% YoY growth) and further increase to US$ 98.5 billion in 2022.Covid-19 impacted almost every sector. R&D is no exception. There have also been several compelling lessons learned on how the pandemic had impacted R&D. Some of these learnings would get translated as new norms, practices, and cultures in the future. R&D investment continued to grow in 2020, despite the economic impacts of COVID-19, although at a significantly lower rate than in 2019 and with big differences across industries. India has been able to make some outstanding progress. Success stories have unfolded due to a notable trend emerging in the sharing of purpose, synergy, collaboration and cooperation amongst R&D institutions, academia and industry facilitated by the government. Both the Information and communications technology (ICT) and the life sciences industries fared well in 2020, less so in other industries such as transport equipment.

The statistics below are taken from Industry data available pre-Corona virus impact.