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Indian Industry Builds Partnership with Technology

Rajendra Prabhu

Strange but true. Liberalization was expected to boost foreign technology and destroy local R&D. Quite the contrary has happened. During the license-quota regime, Indian industry was in unabashed pursuit of foreign technology, and joint ventures tie-ups were the order of the day. The reasoning at that time was that foreign technology enters the country only through tie-ups.

After liberalization, foreign companies are no longer queuing up for joint ventures. They are incorporating their own fully owned companies, or are acquiring companies here. This is forcing Indian industry to seek technology partnerships in the hitherto ignored local R&D institutions of the country. The alternative is to face extinction from the competition offered by foreign companies on our soil.

“This partnership will open many doors,” says Subodh Bhargava, a former CII president and Group Chairman of Eicher Ltd. He was speaking at a CII sponsored industry-cum-institute networking forum seminar on “Driving Knowledge Partnerships” at New Delhi the other day. Bhargava says that for the first time Indian industry is realizing the value of ownership of technology. In a country with a wealth of knowledge driven R&D institutions, this realization is the beginning of the change we have been awaiting from our industry.

The wealth present in Indian R&D is well known overseas. CSIR alone has some 40 national laboratories in different disciplines. DRDO, Department of Atomic Energy, Indian Space Research Organization, all are first-rate institutions. There are over 1140 in-house R&D units in industry, some 80 of which individually spend over Rs. 5 crores annually. But when we evaluate the results in terms of intellectual property, there is little to write home about.

India filed for only 4,824 patents in fiscal 2000 while in calendar year 1999, Korea alone filed for 101,782 patents. In the US the number was 2.70 lakhs and in Japan 4.05 lakhs. “Prior to liberalization and globalization” CII says, “the majority of Indian corporates did not have a clear focus to invest in R&D”. That explains our poor performance despite the large wealth of R&D establishments. According to the Global Competitiveness Report, India is currently ranked in the 28th position amongst world rankings in technological sophistication while tiny Israel occupies the number two position.

So when the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government, Dr. R. Chidambaram says, “technology is power”, Indian industry is beginning to take heed. As a former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Chidambaram realized the power of technology. His team generated the know-how to use nuclear energy for power generation, and developed India into a nuclear weapon capable country. He emphasized that the industry should look to “building long-term relationships” with R&D institutions.

Industrial giants abroad have recognized the quality and capability of Indian R&D. Global companies like GE have turned to the CSIR for polymer technology development, and multi-national pharma companies (beside Ranbaxy and Dr. Reddy’s Labs) have queued up for promising new designer molecules for drugs or drug delivery systems.

The price at which research is available in India is even more astounding. Onconova Therapeutics of USA is collaborating with the Hyderabad based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology to develop an assay system for anti-cancer drugs. There are several hundred similar “pick the Indian brain for technology” programmes launched by the MNCs. The question therefore to Indian industry is: if your competitors and peers can tap this resource, what are you waiting for?
Indian industry, with its survival at stake, is responding to this world-class competition. Some 125 joint R&D projects are on the anvil with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, in which the industry has contributed Rs. 100 crores while the government’s contribution is Rs. 50 crores.

The Technology Development Board under the Department of Science and Technology is supporting several industrial units to adopt Indian technology. Some significant vaccines in preventing hepatitis, diagnostic aids and drugs have been commercialized as a result. Firms like Shanta Biotechnic and Bharat Biotechnic have become major players in biotechnology-based drugs, vaccines and diagnostics because of such partnerships.

Truck major Ashok Leyland is working with the Electronic Research and Development Centre of Thiruvananthapuram to develop a hybrid low emission vehicle. The technologies developed for nuclear reactors are now in use as control systems for pilot-less aircraft, and in Indian Railway’s high haul locomotives etc. ISRO alone claims the transfer of more than 250 technologies to industry.

Then there are other research activities like the Programme Aimed at Technological Self-reliance (PASTER), Funding R&D in Electronics to Industry (FRIEND), Technology Development and Modernization Fund of the Small Industries Development Bank of India and the industry-institute partnership sponsored by Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council etc. Recently the CSIR launched its own new ‘Millennium Initiative.’ Not only are technologies coming out of our labs in partnership with the industry, but also government funding enables these technologies to cross the difficult stages of development, providing commercially viability over the “long time to market.”

All this marks a sea change from the old days when the industry and R&D in the country worked in isolated compartments. There was a time in the CSIR when mentioning a patent was considered heresy.

The present Director General of the institution Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar has changed this attitude. Today he gives his teams instructions in patenting before they launch a research project. “I in India must stand for innovation,” says Mashelkar while addressing industry and finance, and expounding on technologies he has for their use. In his presidential address to the Indian Science Congress in January 2000, Dr. Mashelkar envisaged a scenario by the end of the decade in which the world comes knocking at Indian doors seeking new technologies.

The millennium initiative the S&T Minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi launched to commercialize and develop frontier technologies is yet another attempt to bring Indian technology capabilities to industrial fruition. On its part, the CII has a partnership programme to take technologies to niche sectors where they are transforming traditional crafts and small industries. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s powerful vision of India as a technological power has been set at several public appearances in the 80s and 90s and enunciated in “India 2020: A vision for the new Millennium.” Now that Dr. Kalam is our new President, the stars are in a favourable position for India to take off.