15 little known facts about India

The Indian economy is finally overcoming some of the obstacles that have traditionally been cumbersome to growth and today, India’s economic growth rate is among the fastest in the world, based largely on a flair for information technology and knowledge-based industries. As a result, India is providing an IT workforce for high tech companies around the world and is gradually on the path to becoming the “knowledge center” for the global technology economy.

Most of us know this, but here are 15 facts that you may not know. These facts are as of December 06, so some of them might have changed, especially number 6. If you have recent information, leave a comment and I will add it to the list:

1. India is one of only three countries that makes supercomputers (the US and Japan are the other two).
2. India is one of six countries that launches satellites.
3. The Bombay stock exchange lists more than 6,600 companies. Only the NYSE has more.
4. Eight Indian companies are listed on the NYSE; three on the NASDAQ.
5. By volume of pills produced, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is the world’s second largest after China.
6. India has the second largest community of software developers, after the U.S.
7. India has the second largest network of paved highways, after the U.S.
8. India is the world’s largest producer of milk, and among the top five producers of sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, spices, rubber, silk, and fish.
9. 100 of the Fortune 500 companies have R&D facilities in India.
10. Two million people of Indian origin live in the U.S.
11. Indian-born Americans are among the most affluent and best educated of the recent immigrant groups in the U.S.
12. Thirty percent of the R&D researchers in American pharmaceutical companies are Indian Americans.
13. Nearly 49% of the high-tech startups in silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. are owned by Indians or Indian-Americans.
14. India sends more students to U.S. colleges than any country in the world. In 2004-2005, over 80,000 Indian students entered the U.S. China sent only 65,000 students during the same time.
15. In a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, an Indian-American woman scientist, Dr. Ananda Chakrabaty, won the argument that persons may be granted patents for useful manufacture of living organisms. She defeated the U.S. Patent Office, that argued that living things may not be patented, thus establishing the legal foundation for the biotech industry, (Diamond vs. Chakrabaty, 1980). Dr. Chakrabaty invented a microbe that eats oil spills.

Did you know these facts about India ?