India scoring high as R&D hub

NEW DELHI: With global companies like Intel, Motorola, Cisco and Alcatel upping the ante towards R&D activity in India, the country has emerged as a favorable destination for global IT majors when it comes to core R&D.

A study done by Evalueserve confirms this trend as something, which is likely to drive growth for the IT sector in the near future. "Firms are moving away from the traditional 'closed innovation' model and boundaries of companies are now becoming translucent to allow free flow of innovation assisted by facilitators. India has gained a lot from this phenomenon as some of the worlds best IT companies are finding Indian talent suitable for getting their core work done over here," informed Evalueserve COO, Ashish Gupta.

A yet to be released study by Evalueserve claims that — companies looking to fix their innovation gaps are now looking to partner with external researchers, who in some cases are actually freelance researchers. "This is being done in order to increase the pace of innovation, especially in the initial stages, where the firm can be aided by access to a larger pool of ideas. With a good number of researchers and scholars coming out annually, there is a great opportunity in front of the country in this direction," Gupta explained.

The study further states that innovation clusters or networks are being formed to accelerate the process of innovation. Such clusters are being formed in specific fields, such as genomics, nanotechnology or open source software and some large companies are also experimenting with such a cluster-based approach towards innovation.

"If we look at the trends, IBM currently has several alliances with other companies in the fields of computer manufacturing and software development. Some of these partners constitute its most formidable competitors, HP, Intel, Texas Instrument, Novell, Siemens, etc and all of them have their sizable base in India with regards to research and development," Gupta added.

While much has been written about India's IT services and BPO capabilities, Motorola Asia Pacific Strategy VP, Amit Sharma feels that R&D is the next wave that the country is going to ride on.

"We feel that India is one of the three major R&D hubs worldwide. After IT services and BPO, it is the R&D activity that is going to drive major growth for the country's IT industry, but the government will have to work closely with the industry and issues like segmentation of the industry will be very important for us to work towards achieving this," he explained.

According to the Evalueserve report, more than 100 MNCs have initiated R&D activity in the country and 77 of these have started their R&D operations as direct subsidiaries during 1998 — 2004. While some companies have contracted research to government laboratories such as CSIR, others are collaborating with country's premier R&D institutes such as IITs and Indian Institute of science.

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