Origins
Indra is a god of the rain. If Indra, as a deity, is cognate to other Indo-European gods, either thunder gods such as Thor, Perun, and Zeus, or gods of intoxicating drinks such as Dionysos, his name has either not been preserved in any other branch, or else it is itself an Indian (or perhaps Indo-Iranian) innovation.
In historical Vedic religion, Indra has prominence as the continuation of chief god of the Indo-European pantheon Dyēus. Dyēus himself appears in the Vedas as Dyaus Pita, a relatively minor deity who, interestingly, is the father of Indra. This may derive from the same longstanding father-usurpation pattern found in Greek mythology, in which even Zeus' offspring by Metis was predicted to overthrow him, had the resulting child (Athena) been male. A similar pattern may come into play regarding the relatively low status of Tyr compared to Odin or Thor in Norse paganism (though Tyr has since been posited as Odin's son, instead of his father). Even in ancient Slavic religion, Perun, the Sky God, is the main deity, while his father Svarog, with his heaven named Svarga (same as Indra's Heaven) was in most areas a less prominent deity.
It was once supposed that Vedic Indra corresponds to Verethragna of the Zoroastrian Avesta. This idea was based primarily on the fact that the noun verethragna- corresponds to Vedic vrtrahan-, which is predominantly an epithet of Indra. The supposition that Indra corresponds to Verethragna is now controversial. While both vritra- and verethra- derive from the same root "to cover", the word verethra- is today understood to mean "obstacle". Thus, verethragna- is now understood to reflect "smiter of resistance".
Vritra does not appear in either the Avesta or in 9th-12th century books of Zoroastrian tradition. Since the name 'Indra' appears in Zoroastrian texts as that of an arch-demon opposing Truth (Vd. 10.9; Dk. 9.3; Gbd. 27.6, 34.27), it may be supposed that Verethragna was a way of reintroducing him in a favourable light.
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