India is global hotspot for innovation: Kamal Nath
Thursday, 25 January 2007, 18:30 IST
Printer Print Email Email
Davos (Switzerland): India has become a global hotspot for innovation, attracting a fourth of the world's fresh investments in research and development, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said here Thursday. "Our country is drawing 25 percent of the fresh global investments in research and development centres and many of these set up by multinationals are among their largest such units outside the US or Europe," the minister said. Addressing a breakfast meeting organised by Bangalore-based IT major Wipro on the margins of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at this Alpine ski resort, Kamal Nath said that some 200 global companies had set up their research centres in India in the past few years. The areas session covered a wide spectrum of industry such as IT, telecom, biotechnology, chemicals, automobiles, consumer goods and pharmaceuticals, he said. "In many cases, such as Oracle, Intel, Adobe, ST Microelectronics, SAP and others, their India research and development centre is the largest facility outside the US or Europe," Kamal Nath, who is leading the Indian delegation here, said. "Others, including IBM, Texas Instruments, Delphi, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, GE, Philips, Motorola, Google, Cisco, Eli Lilly, Bayer, Siemens and LG, have been tapping Indian talent for conducting cutting-edge research," he added. "We in India are delighted that this bridge links us directly to a high-ground in the new world." Kamal Nath also underscored that the Vision 2020 plan of the country's Planning Commission had encouraged the country to witness the excitement of innovation as the bridge to development in fields that had not been explored. "As we speak, rural India is skipping a couple of chapters in rural marketing manuals. Professionals treading traditionally successful paths are completely confounded as they encounter farmers researching best deals on the Internet," he said.
Source: IANS
siliconindia