409 listed companies spend Rs 36,000 crore on R&D in FY20; Tata Motors tops the list

Among sectors, Automobile was the top contributor with spending Rs 11,100 crore on R&D followed by the pharmaceutical sector with Rs 10,600 crore spending, industrials + energy with Rs 8,200 crore and IT with Rs 2,300 crore of R&D spends.

The private sector investment in R&D was at 37 percent which is much lower than the government and is a departure from the global trend of higher contribution by the private sector.

R&D spend in India has remained stable at around 0.7 percent of GDP since 2014. However, it is relatively low as compared to other emerging economies (1-1.5 percent) and significantly lower than developed economies and China (more than 2 percent)

Tata Motors emerged as the largest spender on R&D in FY20 with a total of Rs 3,100 crore. The amount was 7.10 percent of its total revenue.

Followed by it was another auto major - Mahindra & Mahindra – which had spent 6.50 percent of its revenue or Rs 3,000 crore on R&D.

The energy-to-digital-retail conglomerate Reliance Industries stood third with Rs 2,500 crore or 0.8 percent of revenue followed by Lupin at Rs 1,500 crore or 13.90 percent of revenue and Hindustan Aeronautics with Rs 1,200 crore or 5.70 percent of revenue.

In terms of the largest spenders of R&D relative to revenues, SPARC spent 587 percent while Suven Life Sciences spent 304 percent of their revenues on R&D in FY20.