Global industry looks at Indian R&D talent
When it decided to start research and development of smart and hybrid vehicles, General Motors outsourced this project to the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
GM's choice probably caps a trend that has caught the fancy of large multinational and Indian companies: that Indian research institutes have a strong R&D capability, which the industry can outsource.
And such an arrangement can work both ways as Prof Dhande, dean R&D at IIT-K has discovered. "The institutes need to step up their R&D activities and for the industry, it is a huge base of trained talent waiting to be used." If for the industry it means a cheap R&D base which is also creative, for the technical institutes it translates into helping professors upgrade their technical knowledge without going on a sabbatical and results in better placement offers for them. The added bonus is multiple projects get executed.
Technical institutes often have invaluable databases industry could tap on. Take IIT-Delhi, which has a sound atmospheric science centre. As a result, IBM has chosen to place its geographical information services research there.
"Even Indian companies are catching on and using technical training institutes for R&D activities," says Prof P Radhakrishnan, principal of the PSG College of Technology. Samtel is setting up the Samtel Centre for Indian Infrastructure at IIT-K. "Samtel, incidentally, is here not just for a single project but for long-term research as well," says Radhakrishnan.
"A major advantage of MNCs setting up research centres in Indian institutes is that they draw in Indian corporates as well," says Dhande. Servicing both Silicon Graphics and the Indian footwear industry, he should know what he's talking about.
Another benefit to these institutes doing research for world industry is the much-needed recognition that has often eluded Indian researchers. "Research was often limited to ideas and could not translated into products for want of funds," says Radhakrishnan. Because, unlike in the US, there is little funding or even marketing efforts after the projects is over.
Both professors hope that with the setting up of long-term and high profile research centres here, Indian institutes would also be able to ride piggyback on the industry to productise and market these to potential consumers.
Probably one of India's biggest R&D success stories is the Aeronautical Development Agency's Autolink, which was successfully marketed to Boeing and British Aerospace and is in use even today. With more industry-institute ventures, this success may well be duplicated.
Source : MI
Dec 6, 1999 |
