RIL has spent over Rs 9,500 cr on R&D, plans to pump in Rs 2,000 cr in FY19

Reliance Industries has been aggressively investing in research & development (R&D) to support its digital services business. It spent over Rs 1,824 crore in the last financial year for strengthening and future-proofing the company. The petroleum and petrochemical giant made initial investments in R&D after buying spectrum for the telecom business and has spent over Rs 9,500 crore in the last eight years -- it is likely to invest another Rs 2,000 crore in the current financial year.

The company filed 192 patents in 2017/18 and 373 in 2016/17 -- it was granted 68 and 60 patents, respectively, in the two years. The company has got 186 patents granted in the last four years. Over 900 scientists and engineers are working in the R&D division that has 24 labs in the 1.2 lakh sq. ft. R&D headquarters in Reliance Corporate Park (RCP), Navi Mumbai.

The R&D investments are not large for RIL considering its revenue of Rs 4.3 lakh crore and Rs 36,000 crore profit.

RIL also has an Innovation Council that has Nobel Laureates Jean-Marie Lehn and Robert Grubbs as members. Dr. William Haseltine, Prof. Gary Hamel and Prof. George Whitesides are other members of the council. Its objective of scaling up and patenting its proprietary technologies led to the creation of the R&D headquarter. The company uses internal crowd sourcing as an enabler to R&D and documents the R&D data, process and analytics digitally. The R&D activities are spread across various businesses and functions for conducting high-end inter-disciplinary research, says the company.