Commerce and Industry Minister Smt.Nirmala Sitharaman said that a dedicated group will be formed to identify & implement expeditiously steps government can take to accelerate further India's innovation. Addressing the function at the launch of the Global Innovation Index report 2016 in New Delhi she said it is possible to do more and the country is thirsting to move forward.

India has improved its innovation ranking in GII to reach 66th position from its last year’s rank of 81st, this improvement in the rank for India comes after 5 years of continuous drop in its ranking. Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Finland and Singapore lead the 2016 rankings in the Global Innovation Index, released jointly by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) AT Kearney and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Government innovation acceleration through a dedicated task group to identify and rapidly implement policy and administrative steps. The central executive will constitute a dedicated group charged with identifying and expeditiously implementing practicable government steps to accelerate national innovation, prioritizing policy and administrative interventions to stimulate R&D, commercialization, and ecosystem facilitation; the initiative is motivated by recent improvement in the nation's Global Innovation Index standing and intends to use international benchmarking and multi-stakeholder engagement to inform domestic policy measures.