BHEL to invest Rs 1,300 crore towards R&D

Power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) may invest around Rs 1,300 crore towards R&D activities in the current fiscal, a senior official of the public sector undertaking said here today.

"During the last year (2012-13), company-wide R&D investment went up to Rs 1,248 crore, which was an increase of 4.1% over previous year. This year also, the spend will be in the range of 4% over last year's amount," S Sekar, General manager, BHEL Corporate R&D told reporters in a press conference.

He said the products that were developed in-house have contributed Rs 9,643 crore to BHEL's overall turnover last year.

"Turnover from the in-house developed products and services stood at Rs 9,643 crore, which was 19.3% of the turnover of the company," he added.

Sekar said BHEL's R&D division had filed 385 intellectual property rights comprising copyrights and patents last year, taking the overall tally to 2,170 patents and copyrights.

During 2012-13, BHEL recorded a turnover of Rs 50,015 crore and net profit of Rs 6,485 crore.

In the utility segment of the state-run company, capacity addition of 9,328 MW has been achieved, surpassing all the previous records, Sekar added.

BHEL's R&D division has nearly 700 engineers and some of the projects and research works are done jointly with academia.