India improved its ranking in the Global Innovation Index (GII) by five places to 52nd in 2019 from 57th position in the last year.

It is now the most innovative economy in the Central and South Asian region, according to the GII released at an event organised by the Commerce Ministry and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on July 24.

India was ranked 88 in 2015 and managed to improve its position on the back of factors like strong information and communication technology services exports, scientific publications and investment by its top three companies in research and development.

However, one of the areas that India lacks in is the proportion of women with advanced degrees in the workforce, according to the report. Apart from this, India also lags in areas like overall quality of education; access and use of information and communication technologies; and the student to teacher ratio in secondary level education.

Other reasons behind India's rise are the quality of some of its educational institutions, including some Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) establishments and the proportion of science and engineering graduates on offer globally, according to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.

"India also improves in State of cluster development and this is confirmed in Special Section: Cluster Rankings, highlighting the performance of Bengaluru, New Delhi and Mumbai," the index stated.

"All countries are continually making efforts to increase their innovation expenditure and policy expertise, yet it is obvious that India is catching up more quickly," said Naresh Prasad, WIPO Assistant Director General-India.

Goyal said that India will continue its efforts to breach the top 50 in the GII, a target set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He added that the 'ultimate aim' is to reach the top 10.

Goyal urged the research and development institutions, universities and private sector to transform the country into a hub of innovation and requested the WIPO to factor in India’s rural innovation as part of the innovation index in future.

According to the index, Switzerland is the most innovative economy, followed by Sweden, US, Netherlands and United Kingdom.

China, which has invested heavily in research and development, moved up three positions to rank 14. Israel managed to secure the 10th rank, marking the first time an economy from the Northern Africa and Western Asia region broke into the top 10.