"In India, we mostly believe in process development and tweaking the molecules and processes. In fact, most of the research and development (R&D) efforts are to fit into the kind of business scenarios we are in,” says Dr. Ganesan Balakrishnan, GM - R&D and Special Projects, Sudarshan Chemical Industries.

 

“The bitter fact is that I have been unable to even download the Indian patents filed in the last one year as the information is simply missing on the concerned web portal. To tackle the same, we need mindset changes, which of course will take time. However, we can begin by spreading awareness on patents among our highly educated industry members. Paradoxical thinking needs to be a part of curriculum when we talk about inculcating R&D culture in our education. In today’s world we talk about process intensifications, alternative clean energy systems but it is a fact that engineers and marketing teams work in silos, says Dr. Ganesan Balakrishnan. 

 

At Sudarshan Chemicals, we involve R&D, finance, operations and marketing teams in the thinking process whenever we initiate a new project, right from beginning to the commercialization. There should be more interaction with academic institutes for joint research efforts and using the power of publications to drive our growth. At the same time, R&D should be looked upon as an investment by the industry and not an expense. The direction of a company should change based on the outsider's approach of analyzing its operations and not by self judging the outcomes,” added Dr. Balakrishnan.

 

Dr. Balakrishnan along with other veterans of the chemical industry deliberated the strategy for current and future R&D initiatives at ‘NextGen Chemical and Petrochemical Summit 2021’ organized by Indian Chemical News from 7-8 October, 2021. Titled as ‘Leveraging R&D for achieving higher growth’, the panel discussion was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Editor, Indian Chemical News.

 

"The Indian chemical industry is well diversified and expected to reach US $300 billion by 2025. This is a really good growth target but the primary driver for sustainable growth continues to be innovation. Conventional approach by old companies or status quo is no longer possible as the industry is undergoing a major technological change. The chemical companies can only achieve long term growth if they invest well in R&D. However, in India hardly 3% of revenue is spent on R&D as compared to 8% globally. This big gap is because companies here mostly spend on developing cost effective processes whereas global innovator companies put efforts into direct discovery of new molecules. Therefore, more investments are required for the process chemistry part and new areas such as green chemistry. We are dependent on key raw materials from China and it leads to a lot of volatility in the market. To get out of this cycle, we need to be highly backward integrated and invest into areas such as catalysis and also focus on reduce, recycle and renew,” says Dr. Kamlesh Pai Fondekar, Head, R&D and Nutrition, Animal Feed Business, Godrej Agrovet Limited.

 

"Governments, universities and industries are like a triple helix that have to stay in sync with each other to drive innovation. However, we are lacking in enough skilled industry ready manpower from universities due to quality. Our world rankings are dismal and it reflects badly on our innovation. Our R&D spending is less than one percent which compared to countries like Germany that have witnessed incremental rise through industry’s contribution, is very disappointing. Yet on an optimistic note, Indian R&D spending has risen by 7.9 percent CAGR over the period of 10 years. The better news is that in the latest budget, the government has announced the creation of the National Research Foundation which will spend US $1.37 billion for research in colleges and universities. Open innovation model that is being followed now globally has to come to India," says Mayukh G. Warawdekar, Senior VP - R&D, Fine Organic Industries Limited.

 

In terms of prioritization, we need to focus on biorefineries in much better ways. For example, a lot of biochemicals can be made from abundant agricultural waste. At the same time, we need to see whether the solutions such as bioplastics that require high temperature for composting are really relevant to us in current form. Being an agriculture based economy, we must innovate enough to resolve the issue of stubble burning witnessed by us every winter,” added Mayukh G. Warawdekar. 

 

"R&D investments are required to be globally competitive and have to be linked to technological innovation, leading to economic growth. India wants to be a US $5 trillion economy which is not possible without investing into research. I believe chemical and allied industries need to invest more in R&D and generate IPR that need to be utilized. The R&D expenditure in India is way below as compared to China, USA, Japan and South Korea. These countries are well aware about the role of R&D in driving their industries and have set appropriate targets. In China, a lot of academic institutes are doing R&D and developing products that get transferred to industry. That rarely happens in India. Barring a few IITs, IICT or IISC, Indian institutes hardly innovate much and as a result, we are at the 48th number in rankings," says Prof. G. D. Yadav, Emeritus Professor of Eminence, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai. 

 

Patent filing, therefore, is very important but requires a lot of money and support that can be met through endowment funds with the help of industry. At the same time, patent enforcement has to be enabled instead of battling it out in the court where cases linger on for years. Our scientists must focus on 'Patent, Publish, and Prosper,” said Prof. G. D. Yadav. 

 

“Patent brings a lot of respect in industries in India and globally. The current patent structure is still considered an ivory tower. The awareness in general about the topics not only about patents but IPR is limited to just 3 percent of academicians or industry experts. Less than one percent of India’s GDP goes into research which means that the majority of students never get education on patents. Patents must create value and should remain limited to being citations. Incentives whether aligned with patents or ways of doing business, will attract traction. Creating awareness among young people about how science touches day to day life will play an important role in spreading the need for patents. I was in touch with a colleague who is a part of Atal Tinkering Labs, a government initiative where they create awareness among students across all locations, be it cities or towns. The mindset has to change, especially within SMEs where it is not considered so important. Digital based awareness campaigns could be held besides the incentives for innovators so that patents become tangible and beneficial to common people,” says Bijal Mathkar, R&I Director, Solvay Research and Innovation Center, India.

 

“We are developing our own molecules at our green R&D centre at Bengaluru and I believe we will soon be in the leading position. We aspire India should have green molecules that would benefit the society as a whole. Also, since there are catalysts being imported, we are trying to develop these here only. Beyond indigenization, our next target is to bring innovation into newer areas so that when the next energy transition happens, we should be able to cater to the requirements," said S. Bharathan, Executive Director - R&D, HPCL.

 

Currently 80 percent of energy requirements are met through imports and we aim to reduce the dependence on foreign sources. We have to reduce the carbon footprint as well as land and water footprint. These are the areas where innovation is being carried out globally and we too have to focus on these next. We are doing the basic research in these areas by collaborating with academic institutes whereas the applied research will happen at the lab scale followed by pilot scale and industrial scale. Technological translation research is our big focus. We are conscious about the patents but we also look at commercializing them first,” added S. Bharathan.