DuPont Knowledge Centre to be fully operational by June

The Rs 150-crore DuPont Knowledge Centre (DKC) in Hyderabad, set up by US-based products and services conglomerate DuPont, will be fully operational by June this year while the biotech centre at the new facility will start operations from next month.

According to DuPont India president and chief executive officer, Balvinder Singh Kalsi, DKC will employ 300 scientists and engineers in its first year of operations. The number is expected to double in the next 2-3 years. DKC is DuPont's sixth major R&D facility outside the US.

He said DuPont was investing over Rs 150 crore in facilities alone and the equipment and running expenditure would be additional. Taking all this into account, the investments in DKC by the end of this year would cross Rs 200 crore.

Located on 15 acres in the ICICI Knowledge Park at Shamirpet on the city outskirts, DKC will have biotechnology laboratories, material research laboratories, engineering design centres and high-end information technology capabilities.

"This is the first time anywhere in the world that we are calling our research facility as knowledge centre," Kalsi said adding DKC would provide, among other things, intellectual property, analytical and high-end knowledge services.

Stating that India was a strategic market for DuPont, Kalsi said the combined average growth rate of the company in India during the past six years stood at 28 per cent. In 2007, the company's revenues from India accounted for $439 million (Rs 1,756 crore).

DuPont chief innovation officer and executive vice-president, Thomas M Connelly, said DKC was expected to be a global centre of excellence for the multinational company. "This will enable us to increase our 'speed to market' with products that come out of our R&D and innovations pipeline, not only for India but also for other growth regions," he said.

DKC director, Homi Bhedwar, said DuPont was planning to locate 15-20 per cent of the company's crop genetics research workforce in India by 2010. About 30 per cent of the workforce at DKC would be the Indian scientists who would be returning from abroad to their native country to pursue industrial R&D careers.