The Department of Science and Technology’s latest figures on India’s research profile record a milestone. In 2023-24, private industry accounted for 51.8% of national research spending — a first in India’s history — overtaking all tiers of government combined for the first time. Through the 2010s, private industry contributed a little over a third of national R&D, and the ratio moved slowly. Then, between 2020-21 and 2021-22, private spending nearly doubled — from ₹46,388 crore to ₹82,975 crore — and total R&D jumped from ₹1.27 lakh crore to ₹1.95 lakh crore in a single year. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation, with a ₹50,000-crore corpus largely to be raised from private sources, was created for precisely this purpose.