India bet its research future on private money: inside the Anusandhan National Research Foundation

India has long had a research-funding problem that everyone could name and few could fix: too little money, too concentrated in a handful of elite institutes, and too dependent on the government to supply it. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is the state’s answer, and it is an unusual one. Rather than promise more public money, it is built to pull most of its funding from outside government altogether.

Created by the ANRF Act 2023, the foundation is meant to seed and grow research across the country’s universities and colleges, not only its national laboratories. In doing so it absorbed the older Science and Engineering Research Board and took on the role of India’s apex research funder, under the Department of Science and Technology .

Why does the funding model matter more than the money?

The headline figure is large, but the structure is the real story. Roughly 70% of the corpus is meant to come from industry and philanthropy, not the exchequer. That is a deliberate departure from how Indian science has been financed, and it is both the foundation’s central bet and its central risk.

Anusandhan National Research Foundation

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is India’s apex research funding body, established by the ANRF Act 2023 to set strategic direction and fund research across universities, colleges and laboratories. Its distinguishing feature is a funding model that expects most of its ₹50,000 crore corpus to come from private and philanthropic sources rather than government.

If the private money arrives at the scale planned, ANRF multiplies the state’s research spend without a matching rise in the budget. If it does not, the foundation is left far short of its target, and the promise of research funding reaching ordinary universities weakens.

What problem is ANRF trying to solve?

The case for change rests on a stark number. India spends roughly 0.6% of GDP on research and development, below the global average of about 1.8% and below the levels of countries it competes with on technology. Worse, the private sector’s share of that spending has historically been low, leaving the government to carry most of the burden.

ANRF attacks both problems at once. It aims to raise the total, and it aims to shift the mix toward private funding, closer to how research is financed in more research-intensive economies. The design assumes that Indian industry and philanthropy will fund research if given a national vehicle to do it through.

Can the money reach ordinary universities?

The foundation’s stated ambition is to fund research beyond the elite institutes, in the state universities and colleges where most Indian students study but little research money currently flows. That is where the framework could matter most, and where it will be hardest to deliver.

Directing competitive grants to institutions with thin research infrastructure requires more than a corpus. It needs review capacity, mentoring, and a tolerance for building research cultures slowly. The interim 2024-25 budget provided ₹2,000 crore as a start, a signal of intent rather than the full scale the model envisions.

Conclusion

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation is an attempt to fix India’s research-funding gap by changing who pays for research, not just how much is spent. Its ₹50,000 crore target and its reliance on private money make it ambitious and fragile in the same measure. Whether it becomes the engine its design promises depends on a question outside any statute: whether Indian industry and philanthropy fund basic research at the scale the country now needs.