According to a study by the UK government, the world’s top 1,250 R&D investment companies together spent 244 billion pounds ($507 billion) in 2006, up 10 per cent from the previous year. Companies from the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK dominated the rankings and contributed 81 per cent of R&D by the G1250, the list of world’s biggest investors.
In contrast, the seven Indian companies spent just about $557 million on research and development activities. Just one Indian company managed a place in the top 500, while the top-1000 list included four companies from India.
Tata Motors was top ranked Indian firm (401st; 91.99 million pounds; followed by Ranbaxy (683rd; 45.82 million pounds), Kpit Cummins Infosystems (861; 33.29 million pounds) and Dr Reddy’s Labs (971; 28.24 million pounds). Mindtree Consulting (ranked 1,079; 23.84 million pounds), Sun Pharma (1,102; 23.25 million pounds) and Mahindra and Mahindra (1,147; 21.74 million pounds) completed the list of Indian firms.
Actual investment
Even though the actual R&D investment by Indian companies was miniscule as compared to most of the global companies, the growth in the past one year was way ahead of the global and UK average for six of the Indian firms on the list. Ranbaxy was the only Indian company to have recorded a dip in R&D spending (19 per cent from the previous year), while other six companies recorded a growth of 28-67 per cent.
Tata Motors recorded a growth of 67 per cent, followed by M&M at 49 per cent. Dr Reddy’s Labs, Kpit Cummins and Sun Pharma increased their R&D spending by about 40 per cent, while Mindtree saw an increase of 28 per cent in the year. According to the British government’s Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills “2007 R&D Scoreboard” report, released earlier this week, included list of top 850 UK firms, whose R&D spending grew by nine per cent to 20.9 billion pounds. The global list of 1,250 companies included 75 UK firms.
UK list
The UK list of 850 companies included two companies with Indian parents — Corus (39th with 76 million pounds of R&D investment), Tata Tea (725th, 0.9 million pounds).
The global list had four US companies in top four positions — Pfizer, Ford, Johnson and Johnson and Microsoft. These were followed by German automaker DaimlerChrysler at the fifth position, with all of them investing over three billion pounds each on R&D activities.
In the UK, drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline was named as the top R&D spender. It was the only company to invest over three billion pounds and was followed by AstraZeneca, BAE Systems, BT and Unilever.