Patent pendency in India will be brought down to the same level as in advanced countries like the US and Japan in the next 18 months.<br/><br/>The country is grappling with massive backlog of Intellectual Property Rights applications and the government is outsourcing the work of processing IPR applications to IITs.<br/><br/>DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant said at the Startup India conference in Delhi that about 2.46 lakh patent applications and 5.32 lakh trademark registrations were pending due to shortage of manpower.<br/><br/>On the other hand, the pendency level is quite low in developed countries like the US and Japan.<br/><br/>MSME Secretary Anup K Pujari said the new single page registration form in the ministry has become extremely popular and efforts were on to further simplify it.<br/><br/>SIDBI CMD K Shivaji said the Small Industries Development Bank of India is active across different phases of the Startup life cycle, like incubation and early stage funding.<br/><br/>He said SIDBI has launched the 'India Aspiration Fund' with a corpus of Rs. 2,000 crore.