Saina Nehwal and women's doubles pair of Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponnappa won their respective matches but K Srikanth failed to breach the defence of Lee Chong Wei. The men's and mixed doubles pairs also bite the dust as India began their campaign on a losing note here.
India, who reached the knockout stage of the biennial tournament in 2011 edition, will next take on three-time champions Korea on Wednesday.
Olympic bronze medallist Saina then brought India back in the contest with a narrow 24-22 21-13 win over world number 56 Tee Jing Yi in a 44-minute women's singles match.
The men's singles contest between world number four Srikanth and two-time Olympic silver medallist Lee, who is playing his first tournament after serving a backdated eight month ban for doping, was expected to be a mouth-watering affair but it ended with the former world number one notching up a 21-16 21-15 win to hand over the lead to Malaysia once again.
However, in the decider, N Sikki Reddy and Arun Vishnu could not get it across the world number 70 pair of Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying and went down 14-21 18-21 in a 40-minute match as India went down 2-3 in the end.