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The Talent Pool

Recent data compiled by The National Association of Software and Services (also known as Nasscom), The Economic Times Intelligence Group and other sources suggests that India has over 21 million graduates, of which around 6 million are science graduates; around 1.3 million with engineering degrees and over 600,000 are doctors. There were an additional 2.4 million graduates including of 26,000 doctors and around 600,000 science graduates added in the year 2004 alone to the overall numbers of graduates in the country.

India has a huge talent force which gives the country a solid footing and advantage over its peer group in the R&D sector.

The R&D Story So Far

According to the Government figures, currently more then 155 international companies are already doing R&D in India. The pharmaceuticals, automobiles and IT sectors are leading the way. Indian companies along with major international companies have already started expanding and increasing their R&D activities in the country.

In the year 2004, Ranbaxy (the pharmaceutical giant) spent around 7% of its sales revenue of 1 billion US dollars on R&D, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories spent around 14% of its annual sales of around 446 million US dollars on R&D. Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra have started allocating more capital to R&D to become more competitive.

The increased spending on R&D has started to deliver results for both the companies in the auto-sector in India. This will only encourage the domestic as well as foreign automobile companies based in India to spend more on R&D. Indian companies in the past have had a very bad track record on R&D spending, they spent less than 1% on R&D, but now things are changing, and the situation is different as the companies have realised the benefits of spending more on R&D.

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* Contributed by -
Sanjeev Kumar is CEO of Delamore & Owl Group of Companies and the Managing Director of Delamore Consulting Ltd.
He holds dual master's degrees: one in Business Administration and another in International Finance. He has been the 2002 recipient of the "Southeast Asia Young Achiever's Award".