Briefing reporters, Zinnov co-Founder & CEO Pari Natarajan said the summit will discuss and provide solutions to issues being faced by R&D offshoring captives across all domains. Most common issues being cost escalation, retaining talent and low employee productivity. On future for R&D captives in India, Mr Pari indicated that they ought to hire and retain talent at senior levels, improve recruitment engines, enhance vendor relationship and follow more disciplined approach of selecting correct destination for product development. They will have to look at smaller cities for hiring and setting up facilities.

These captives need to focus on developing design and development of low-cost products like multiple chipsets for cars, consumer software, build innovative business models to tap the SMB market, he added.

Last year total R&D outsourcing by Indian captives was an estimated of US$9 billion and is expected to grow at 23 per cent year on year, Mr Pari said.