The Hindu Business Line : DuPont looking for site to set up R&D centre

The company is actively looking for a site for their full-fledged R&D centre that would cater not only to domestic application science research, but also the global needs of the parent company. It is mulling the option of basing the R&D centre in the southern or western part of the country and a strong possibility could be Pune or Bangalore.

"We are moving in the direction of the possibility of an R&D facility for application development, where we could consolidate all our R&D work under one roof, but we are still busy putting the nuts and the bolts of the plan in place," said Mr Balvinder Singh Kalsi, the new DuPont India President, who took over last week.

He happens to be the first Indian president that the company has appointed after a line of expatriates who were at the helm for the past decade years since the company started its wholly owned subsidiary here.

The R&D centre will focus on higher-end research.Elaborating on the advantages of having an R&D centre in India, Mr Kalsi said that apart from tapping the human talent and catering to local applications for the huge domestic market of the country, the centre could present an opportunity for India to take the global lead in research in several areas.

"In the automotive sector, right now, we are working closely with four-wheeler manufacturers. We could possibly look at becoming leaders in the two-wheeler sector, which is huge in India," said Mr Kalsi, adding that the Indian operations in the future would like to contribute 10 per cent to the company's Asia business. Asia currently contributes 20 per cent to the parent's global business. However, in recent years, the growth in Asia has been significantly higher than in the US and Europe.

DuPont, which has divided its businesses into five platforms, namely agriculture and nutrition; safety and protection; performance materials; coatings and colour technologies; and electronic and communication technologies, has a turnover in India of around Rs 1,300 crore and is averaging a growth of about 25 per cent. However, its fastest growing segment in India is agriculture and nutrition where average growth rates have touched 30 per cent.

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