Economic slowdown and COVID pandemic will make Budget critical

Karthikeyan Natarajan, President and Chief Operating Officer, Cyient

“It will be a critical Budget as India battles the twin challenges of economic slowdown and COVID pandemic.

We hope the Budget lays down a clear roadmap for a higher Innovation Quotient and sets vision to carve India into an Innovative Economy by 2050. This would require India to grow from 0.5 % of R&D spend to the GDP to improve to 1.5% by end of this decade and reach 2.5-3% by 2050. At Cyient, we are hopeful of an increased Research and Innovation enabling more IP to come from India in the budget from the Finance Minister. Companies are also eagerly awaiting a central Research & Innovation Fund to help build up intellectual property out of the country. This will not only help domestic technology companies but attract global clients to set up their engineering centres out of India.

At Cyient, we have outlined areas of Sustainable Mobility, Smart Manufacturing & Digital plants, Clean plants for Semicon/Pharma industries, smart Healthcare as areas of innovation/IP internally. We would like to request to create innovation clusters across India and help realize the Vocal for Local commitment.”