WIPO’s GII 2025: India Ranked 38th ; Switzerland Topped for 15th Consecutive Year

In September 2025, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in collaboration with the Portulans Institute(PI) released the 18th edition of ‘Global Innovation Index (GII 2025): Innovation at a Cross Roads’. As per the Index, India has secured 38th position globally (up from 39th position in 2024 rankings) with overall score 38.1.

• Despite this slight change, India has made remarkable progress from its 81st position in 2015.
• Switzerland continued to secure 1st position (overall score of 66.0) in the GII rankings for a 15th consecutive year. While, Sweden and the United States of America (USA) retained their 2nd and 3rd positions, respectively for the 3rd consecutive year.

About Global Innovation Index (GII):

Index: The GII, launched in 2007 by INSEAD, Cornell University, and WIPO, is an annual ranking of economies based on their innovation capacity and outcomes, published by WIPO.

Evaluation: The GII evaluated the innovation performance of 139 world economies using some 80 indicators, ranging from Research & Development (R&D) spending, Venture Capital (VC) deals, high-tech exports and Intellectual Property Filings.

Sub-Indices: The GII comprises of two sub-indices:

• The Innovation Input Sub-Index which includes 5 pillars namely, Institutions; Human and Capital Research; Infrastructure; Market Sophistication; and Business Sophistication.
• While, the Innovation Output Sub-Index has 2 pillars i.e. Knowledge and Technology Outputs and Creative Outputs.

Highlights of GII 2025:

Research & Development (R&D): GII 2025 revealed that Research & Development (R&D) growth decreased to 2.9% in 2024 and is estimated to decline further to 2.3% in 2025, marking a significant decrease from 4.4% increase in last year, the lowest growth since 2010 financial crisis.

• The GII 2025 survey indicates that China is on course to emerge as the world’s largest R&D spender.

VC, and Patent Trends: Corporate R&D growth slowed to 1% compared to the 4.6% average of the past decade

• Venture Capital (VC) investments rose by 7.7% in deal values driven by AI-led megadeals, though the number of deals fell by 4.4% for the third consecutive year.
• International patent filings via the WIPO rebounded slightly (+0.5%), led by strong growth in South Korea (+7%), while filings in the USA, Japan, and Germany continued to decline.
• Socioeconomic indicators showed progress, with higher labor productivity, increased life expectancy, and a further decline in poverty.

Top 5 Countries in GII 2025

Key Findings:

Other Countries in Top 10: The United Kingdom(UK) secured the 6th position with a score of 59.1, followed by Finland at 7th with 57.7. The Netherlands (Kingdom of the Netherlands) ranked 8th with 57.0, while Denmark stood at 9th with 56.9.

•  For the 1st time, China featured among the top 10 countries in the index (ranked at 10th spot with overall score of 56.6 ) and continued to be the only middle-income country featured in the GII Top 30.

New Entrants: This year, total 6 countries debuted in the GII, of which 5 are from Sub-Saharan Africa such as: Seychelles(75th), Malawi (125th), Lesotho (132nd), Guinea (133rd) and Congo (137th).

Fastest Climbers: As per GII 2025, China (10th), India (38th), Vietnam (44th), the Philippines (50th), Indonesia (55th), among others, are the middle-income economies ranked within GII Top 70 which have climbed fastest in the ranking since 2013.

Fastest Innovation Climbers: The index revealed that countries like Saudi Arabia (46th), Qatar (48th), Brazil (52nd), Mauritius (53rd), Bahrain (62nd) and Jordan (65th) have been the fastest innovation climbers, since 2019.

Countries with Most Innovation Clusters: For the 3rd consecutive year, China (24) topped among the countries with most number of innovation clusters featured within top 100; followed by the USA (22 clusters) and Germany (7 clusters).

Most Innovative Region: Europe emerged as the most innovative region, with 15 countries ranked among the top 25, including 6 in the top 10 i.e. Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom (UK) (6th), Finland (7th), the Netherlands (8th) and Denmark (9th) .

Global Innovation Hubs: Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania (SEAO) retained its position as global innovation hubs, with 6 economies in the top 25: Republic of Korea (4th), Singapore (5th),China(10), Japan(12th),China(15th) and Australia(22).

Bottom 5 Economies: Niger ranked lowest in the index i.e. at 139th position with overall score of 11.9; followed by Angola (138th), Congo (137th), Venezuela (136th) and Mali (135th).

India-Specific:

Region-wise: India ranked 1st among the 37 Lower Middle-Income (LMI) group economies and also topped among the 10 economies in Central and Southern Asia region.

Cluster Ranking: This year, 4 clusters from India i.e. Bengaluru, Karnataka (21st), Delhi (26th), Mumbai, Maharashtra (46th), and Chennai, TN (84th), featured among the World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters.

Highest Rankings: India performed well in Knowledge and Technology Outputs (22nd) and Market Sophistication (38th).

Lowest Rankings: India ranked lowest on key pillars such as: Business Sophistication (64th), Infrastructure (61st) and Institutions (58th).

India’s Performance:

About World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO):
Director-General (DG) – Daren Tang
Headquarters- Geneva, Switzerland
Established- 1967