As many as 33 Indian varsities made it to the Times Higher Education’s list of top 300 Asian University Rankings 2017 released on Wednesday. Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science led the country’s universities – retaining its 27th spot – while the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (42) and private institute in Chennai Veltech University (43) both feature in the top 50.

For the first time, India is the third most-represented nation in the list. This year, it has more than twice the number of names than the 16 featured in the 2016 list of top 200 universities. “It is great news that India has more than doubled its representation in this year’s ranking,” editor of the UK-based magazine Phil Baty told mint.

While IISc-Bangalore maintained its ranking at the 27th position, IIT-Kanpur jumped several notches from the 101-110 band to rank 63. Baty said the “impressive leap” was a result of “improvements across the board and a particularly high jump in its amount of industry income”.

IIT-Delhi (54) and IIT-Madras (62) also made to the top 100. After the first 100 ranks, Times Higher Education does not attach rankings and places universities in bands. Baty said India’s performance improved because the universities took part in global benchmarking exercises. “Last year, the [Indian] government launched a new funding-backed project aimed at catapulting IITs to the top of world university rankings,” he added.

However, a few Indian universities dropped in rankings. The University of Calcutta fell from the 141-150 band to the 191-200 one, while Amrita University dropped from the 181-190 band to the 251-plus league.

This year, Singapore’s National University topped the list, and China proved to be India’s biggest competition. While Peking University ranked second in the list, five other Chinese varsities made it to the top 20. Hong Kong and South Korea have five institutes each in the top 20. Japan has only two in the first 20, but 69 among the top 300.

Like India, Pakistan tripled its representation from that last year. In 2016, it had only two universities in the list, while it has seven this year. Sri Lanka’s University of Colombo also featured in the list for the first time.