BHEL plans Rs 1,300cr research spend

Hyderabad: PSU giant Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), the leading player in power equipment making, is looking to invest about Rs 1,300 crore on research and development (R&D) activities during the current fiscal. "BHEL has invested close to Rs 1,248 crore on R&D last fiscal, an increase of 4.1 per cent over the preceding financial year (2011-12). This fiscal also, the increase in R&D spending will be in the range of four per cent over last year," S Sekar, General Manager, Corporate R&D, BHEL told media here on Tuesday. According to him, the products developed by the company's R&D division 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 per cent of the turnover of the company," he added. Sekar further said BHEL's R&D division filed 385 intellectual property rights comprising copyrights and patents last year, taking the overall tally to 2,170 patents and copyrights. The division has nearly 700 engineers and some of the projects and research works are done jointly with academia.