The story of Indian innovation has always begun with jugaad. A ₹2 clay fridge that keeps milk cool without electricity (MittiCool), a ₹15 washing machine made from scrap (invented by a Class-8 dropout in Maharashtra), UPI born out of a weekend hackathon at NPCI – these are not exceptions; they are the rule. Jugaad gave us survival genius when capital, infrastructure, and policy were scarce. It produced 195,065 DPIIT-recognised startups, 112 unicorns, and a $450 billion digital economy on a shoestring. But jugaad is now hitting its civilisational ceiling. The same frugal brilliance that built the spark cannot build the fire that will power a developed India by 2047. For that, we need institutional systems: world-class labs, predictable policy, patient capital, and regulatory oxygen. The transition from jugaad to genius is the defining challenge of this decade.
The Jugaad Era: 1991–2020 – What It Achieved and Where It Failed
| Metric | Jugaad Era Peak Achievement | Fatal Limitation in 2025 Context |
|---|---|---|
| Capital Efficiency | $1–3 million to $100M ARR (Zoho, Zerodha) | Cannot fund ₹1,000-cr chip fab or 1,000-qubit system |
| Speed to Market | MVP in 90 days | Cannot survive 36-month patent delays |
| Scale Reached | 1–10 million users (PhonePe, Paytm) | Cannot reach 1 billion vernacular users without sovereign AI |
| Survival Rate | 10% five-year survival | Deep-tech/hardware needs 60–70% survival |
| Global Category Creation | UPI, ONDC | Still zero Indian-owned foundational tech stacks |
Jugaad gave us miracles of efficiency; it cannot give us miracles of sovereignty.
The Genius Gap: Where Systems Are Still Missing in 2025
| Required System | 2025 India Reality | Global Benchmark (Israel/USA) | Gap Cost to India |
|---|---|---|---|
| R&D Spend % GDP | 0.68% | Israel 5.4%, USA 3.5% | $300–400 billion annual shortfall |
| Patent Commercialisation | 15% | Israel 90%, Stanford 82% | 450,000+ technologies stuck in labs |
| Deep-Tech Funding Share | 7% of total VC | USA 42%, China 38% | $15–20 billion annual under-investment |
| Lab-to-Market Timeline | 36–48 months | Stanford 6–12 months | 68% faculty refuse to spin out |
| Regulatory Sandboxes | 28 fragmented state sandboxes | One national sandbox (USA) | 41% hardware startups flip overseas |
These gaps are not accidents; they are the direct result of building an ecosystem on jugaad-era policy while competing in a genius-era world.
The Genius Pioneers Already Proving the Model Works
| Company / Institution | Innovation Type | 2025 Milestone | Funding / Valuation | System That Made It Possible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Krutrim | Sovereign AI | 22-language foundation model | $2.5 billion | IndiaAI Mission + private capital |
| Skyroot Aerospace | Orbital launch | 3 successful launches, $30/kg target | $200 million | IN-SPACe reforms + ISRO partnerships |
| QpiAI | Quantum computing | 25-qubit “Indus” superconducting system | $32 million | National Quantum Mission |
| IIT Madras | Faculty spinouts | 104 startups, ₹2,200 crore combined value | ₹1,100 crore corpus | 20% time + equity policy |
| Bugworks | Novel antibiotics | Phase II trials for AMR drug | $80 million | BIRAC + global pharma partnerships |
| Logy.AI | 3nm chip design | First Indian 3nm tape-out | $120 million | Semiconductor Mission + GIFT City |
These are not outliers; they are proof that when systems exist, Indian genius scales faster and cheaper than anywhere else.
The Five Systems India Must Build by 2030
| System Required | 2025 Status | 2030 Target | Owner / Cost Estimate |
|(sp|——————————–|————————————–|—————————————-|——————————-|
| National Deep-Tech Fund | ₹50,000 crore announced | ₹5 lakh crore (70% private) | MeitY + DPIIT / ₹3.5L cr |
| Unified Tech Transfer Act | Zero | One law, 90-day licensing | DST + UGC / ₹8,000 cr |
| Campus Innovation Zones | 12 pilots | 500 campuses with pre-cleared imports | MHRD + MeitY / ₹15,000 cr |
| Sovereign AI + Quantum Mission| ₹16,300 crore combined | ₹2 lakh crore combined | MeitY + DST / ₹1.8L cr |
| Startup Ombudsman | None | Statutory body with 30-day binding orders| DPIIT / ₹2,500 cr |
Total investment required: less than two years of current fuel subsidies.
Conclusion
Jugaad was never a weakness; it was a superpower born out of necessity. It taught an entire generation to create something from nothing, to move fast when the world moved slow, and to serve a billion people with ingenuity instead of infrastructure. We must honour that legacy, not abandon it.
But the India of 2047 cannot be built on clay fridges and weekend hacks alone. It will be built on sovereign AI that speaks 22 languages, on rockets that cost one-tenth of the West, on quantum machines that secure our data, and on chips etched with Indian minds. Those miracles require systems: predictable policy, patient capital, world-class labs, and the courage to invest before the returns are obvious.
The spark is already burning bright.
The choice before us is simple: keep feeding it with jugaad, and watch it flicker and die when the wind changes,
or surround it with the institutional oxygen it needs and turn it into a fire that lights the world.
India has proven it can innovate with nothing.
Now it must prove it can dominate with everything.
The era of jugaad built the spark.
The era of genius must build the fire.
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Also Read
1 Red-Tape Reckoning: How Bureaucratic Delays Are Still Choking Early-Stage Innovation in India 2025 – Cut the Knots or Knot the Future
2 Karnataka’s Triple Tech Triumph: Unveiling IT, Startup, and Space Policies at Bengaluru Tech Summit 2025
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