India Shines

Seven Indian firms among world's 1,250 top R&D investors

Tata Motors, India's most valued automobile firm, and drugmaker Ranbaxy are among the seven Indian firms in the world's top 1,250 companies ranked on the basis of investments in research and development. According to a study by the UK government, the world's top 1,250 R&D investment companies together spent 244 billion pounds ($507 billion) in 2006, up 10 per cent from the previous year.

Companies from the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK dominated the rankings and contributed 81 per cent of R&D by the G1250, the list of world's biggest investors. In contrast, the seven Indian companies spent just about 557 million dollars on research and development activities. "Firms from India and China have yet to establish themselves as significant players in the G1250, although other evidence suggests that both countries are increasingly important locations for R&D," the British government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills said in its "2007 R&D Scoreboard" report, released earlier this week. The study also included a list of top 850 UK firms, whose R&D spending grew by nine per cent to 20.9 billion pounds. The global list of 1,250 companies included 75 UK firms.

Just one Indian company managed a place in top 500, while the top-1000 list included four companies from India. Tata Motors was the top ranked Indian firm (401st; 91.99 million pounds; followed by Ranbaxy (683rd; 45.82 million pounds), Kpit Cummins Infosystems (861; 33.29 million pounds) and Dr Reddy's Labs (971; 28.24 million pounds). Mindtree Consulting (ranked 1,079; 23.84 million pounds), Sun Pharma (1,102; 23.25 million pounds) and Mahindra and Mahindra (1,147; 21.74 million pounds) completed the list of Indian firms.


Three Indians among Europe's 100 power-women bankers

Women are scarce in top echelons of domestic banks, except for a few like ICICI Bank, but the fairer-sex bankers of Indian origin are making it big in the West with three of them being named among 100 most powerful women in the European financial world. Julie Chakraverty, the youngest Managing Director and a board member at Swiss banking giant UBS; Ina De, Europe head of new equity issues at JPMorgan; and Rita Dhut, head of value investments at leading UK fund manager Morley Fund Management have been named among the Europe's most influential bankers by the Financial News weekly in its "FN-100 Women" list. This is despite banking and financial sectors being long considered as a men's territory in India as well as abroad.

In India, there are just about half a dozen women bankers holding top management level positions across various banks, with the country's biggest private sector lender ICICI Bank accounting for more than half of them. Chanda Kochhar was recently promoted as Joint Managing Director at ICICI bank and is being tipped as the next CEO after K V Kamath retires next year. Besides, the bank has Vishakha Mulye as Executive Director of ICICI General Insurance business, Renuka Ramnath as chief of ICICI Ventures and Shikha Sharma heading its life insurance business. Besides ICICI Bank, state-run Central Bank has a women as its Chairman and MD (H A Daruwalla) and mortgage lender HDFC has Renu Karnad as an executive director. "When it comes to success, gender is less of a barrier, as banking and finance, the sectors which were once considered to be a hard-core man's territory has been breached by plenty of fairer sex," Financial News said.


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