JK Tyre & Industries announced plans to invest ₹100 crore more into its Research and Development (R&D) centre in Mysuru taking the total funding to 300 Cr rupees.
The R&D centre is the Raghupati Singhania Centre of Excellence (RPSCOE), that was inaugurated in 2018. The funding will be used to procure additional equipment and the latest technology to enable scientists to scale up the R&D for developing stand-out products.
V.K. Misra, technical director, JK Tyre & Industries, commented that the investment is due to the fact that a star rating system will be soon adopted for tyres in India and an upgraded R&D centre was the need of the hour to get the company technology-ready when the rating system rolls out. The rating system will be implemented by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and Petroleum Conservation Research Association and the ratings will represent the fuel-saving property or fuel efficiency of product.
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The tyre firm invests 1% to 1.5% of its total turnover on R&D, added Mr. Mishra.
The investment will also be used to do intense research for developing tyres for Electric Vehicles in India. Its a new segment for the people in this country but the number of bookings for recently launched EVs are indicative of a bright future.
Mr. Misra said:
“We are technology-ready to provide tyres for the EV segment and have offered the new tyres to manufacturers engaged in development of EVs like Mahindra and Nissan.”
The R&D for EV tyres will also simultaneously benefit the development of conventional tyres with regard to new technologies. Mr. Misra, suggested that the company has developed a new product with “fuel saver technology’’ that offers 8% higher fuel efficiency.
“We did tests last year and this data is based on actual tests. The same is being adopted for tubeless tyres as well.”
The Raghupati Singhania Centre For Excellence is a centralised centre with 180 employees. The centre has been strategically established in Mysuru as the company already has three plants in the city, and also because the city is pretty much the hub of research and creativity in India.
