India seeks to be global R&D center

India seeks to be global R&D center
Bangalore, India - India's Department of Information Technology (DIT) is conducting an international study in its quest to promote the country as a global research and development destination for IT. The study will explore how the country, which today is globally recognized as a source for low-cost software development, can reposition itself as a locus for innovative engineering.

The promotion of R&D is not a new focus area for DIT, which has already funded a number of projects. Global IT giants such as Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Motorola Inc. and Texas Instruments Inc. already have R&D centers in the country, and some local companies, such as Wipro Ltd., have positioned themselves as R&D labs for hire.

The new study plans to draw on the experiences and opinions of Indian companies like Wipro; global consulting firms, such as International Data Corp.; overseas companies that already have R&D centers within the country; and India's major IT industry associations for hardware and software: respectively, the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (Mait) and the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom). The effort will work to determine what most concerns and encourages overseas-based companies when they consider investing in R&D in India. It will identify areas of short- and long-term focus for R&D here, examine strategies to get more funding into the country and look for ways to enhance the country's image as an R&D center.

Hardware thrust
"The government and the industry need to position India as a nation of technological excellence, or the perception will forever remain that we are only providers of inexpensive services," said Mait president S. Devarajan.

If India is to cement a role as a global competitor, "then we will have to design, develop and produce our own hardware," said R. Chidambaram, scientific adviser to the nation's prime minister. There is also a security imperative, Chidambaram said, in that "strategic sectors such as defense can ill afford to risk the national security by relying on imports.

"The Indian IT industry now must enter the hardware arena. It is time that Indian industry looked at the existence of local capabilities and capacities to significantly contribute to the hardware sector through the value-addition route."

Wipro, which has had a background in hardware engineering for years, believes key segments for drawing R & D funds into the country are automotive electronics, consumer electronics, chip design, mobile services, digital television and digital cable.

"The best areas are those that are [centered on] software design and chip design, as we have good university support and local companies [in the field]," said Ramesh Emani, chief executive of Wipro's embedded and access solutions division. "Wipro, for instance, is doing reference designs for semiconductor companies and also has internal R&D projects, such as in wireless-LAN solutions."

Gartner Group consultants here see a potential for India to pursue a broader role in fields where it has already established a modest base of local capability, such as chip design, embedded software design and development, intellectual property, interoperability, gaming, software development and hardware and software co-design. "The huge talent pool being churned out by universities every year is one of the prime attractions for global enterprises to base their R&D facilities in India. The same professionals would cost much more if they were to be based in U.S. or European facilities," said Ravindra Datar, principal analyst of IT services at Gartner India.

At the same time, Datar warned that "a drop in the quality of education in a bid to increase quantity would be the worst thing that could happen."

The Indian government must assume a primary role in promoting the country's IT capabilities, said Vinay Deshpande, one of the people behind the development of India's homegrown low-cost handheld PC, the Simputer, and a former chief of Mait. "The single most important government initiative would be to market Indian R&D capability as aggressively as the government has marketed India's software services capability," he said.

Deshpande sees several key areas for R&D investment by overseas companies in India.

"VLSI design and DSP-based software are the leading contenders, as a lot of activity in these areas has already started," Deshpande said. "Embedded-systems design-hardware, firmware and software-is another area with great potential. That area includes Internet appliances, handheld devices, set-top boxes, automotive electronics and process control."

Observers said they believe the best way for the Indian government to foster a culture of innovation is to begin by acknowledging the fruits of the R&D that has already taken place in the country. Such recognition has not always been readily forthcoming: The Simputer, for instance, has found more encouragement overseas than in India. Apart from a few awards, the Indian government has largely pretended not to have noticed the Simputer, to the consternation of many in the Indian tech community.

One overseas company that has already made extensive use of India's R&D capabilities is Analog Devices Inc.

A decade ago, ADI launched a series of initiatives with local companies that included development of DSPs for electronic meters and work on a low-cost wireless local loop using ADI's chips.

One-stop shopping
"Attracting R&D investments in itself will not be adequate," said Ashok Kamath, managing director for Analog Devices India. "My view is that we should promote the manufacturing industry in parallel, so that India becomes a one-stop destination, from design to finished goods.

"We should leverage the fact that for the past few years Indian IT companies have been servicing the telecom industry; the electronics gadget world, such as PDAs; and the automotive electronics markets," Kamath said. "We should start to come up with complete solutions that would serve these spaces."

Other sources contended that India must spruce up its infrastructure as part of the move to foster a culture of investment and innovation.

"Improvement of the existing intellectual-property and patent laws; improving the telecommunication infrastructure so as to facilitate high-speed, high-bandwidth, secure data transfer; and improving the general urban infrastructure are [all] needed to facilitate R&D investment in India," said Rohit Biddappa, marketing communication specialist at Cadence India.

Also, "The IT industry needs to collaborate better with leading institutes such as the Indian Institute of Technology," said Anil Risbud, chief technology officer for Geometric Software Solutions.

"Industry organizations like Nasscom need to project India as the most cost-effective, high-quality destination to outsource R&D projects," he said. "Innovative business models will need to be worked out." Among its projects, Geometric has developed and licensed technologies used by PLM solution vendors such as Dassault Systemes and EDS PLM.