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Opportunity to create 2 lakh research & development jobs in India by 2018

NEW DELHI: India, which has a presence of 228 of the top 500 firms globally, has the opportunity of creating 200,000 jobs in the research and development (R&D) space in the next five years, global advisory and management consulting firm Zinnov said in a report.

According to the report, Crossing the Value Chasm, China is the leading destination for R&D investments with a total of 385 G500 companies having a presence there as compared to 228 global 500 companies in India and 220 firms in the Bay Area in the US.

"In keeping with the historic trend that companies with a higher R&D spend find India more attractive for investments, there is a clear opportunity to create additional 200,000 R&D jobs in India by global 500 companies in the next 5 years," the report added.

The top 500 R&D spenders contributed over $577 billion, with the top 100 R&D spenders alone contributing 66 per cent to the global R&D spend, it said.

Of the total global R&D spend, 40 per cent of the overall is from organisations headquartered in North America, followed by 34 per cent from Europe, 18 per cent from Japan and 7 per cent from Asia-Pacific, Zinnov said in the report.

"In 2012, 26 firms increased their global R&D spend by at least 20 per cent and contributed over $19 billion. Fourteen of these companies have a presence in India and have increased their global R&D spend by $14 billion, of this only $129 million was invested in India," the report said.

At present, close to 50 per cent of the global 500 firms present have over 10 per cent of the global R&D head count in India.

While software/Internet companies tend to achieve the milestone of locating 10-20 per cent of their R&D headcount in India faster than others, fee companies seem to have reached a ceiling at a minimal 1-4 per cent of the global head count.

"A factor is that many of the India centres lack strong leadership and global stakeholder buy-in. Currently, only 11 per cent of the companies with centres in India have global roles in engineering, product management and support functions," it said.

Only 15 per cent of the India leaders are proactive, influential and have a global impact, indicating a need to grow strong a leadership pipeline, the report added.