BENGALURU: In what could possibly affect the future plans of MNC firms to set up their R&D centres in Bengaluru, the city has proven to be a more expensive city for R&D centres compared to Pune and Hyderabad. In Bengaluru, the cost per employee was Rs 26.1 lakh, Hyderabad Rs 25.47 lakh, and Pune Rs 22.7 lakh. Also, the average overall cost per FTE (full time equivalent which indicates workload of an employee) grew faster for Bengaluru over other cities.
Bengaluru has been hosting many MNC firms’ R&D labs for about 20 years now. Many a well-known MNC set up their R&D labs here, thus generating thousands of direct and indirect jobs. But, the cost per employee has been rising fastest in Bengaluru and it has thus become the costliest place for employing people in R&D units.
Over 80 per cent of the infrastructure cost per employee came from facilities and IT/networking, a study said.
Zinnov, a Bengaluru-based management consulting firm in its study on the cost of operations at the MNC R&D centres in India, ‘Operations Cost Benchmarking 2015’ revealed these insights. The study indicates that MNC R&D centres continue to face rising costs year after year, with the average cost per employee (full time) rising 6.5 per cent compared to 2013-2014.
The report, which is based on the actual cost data of over 50 MNC R&D centres in India provides insights on cost landscape across industry verticals, locations, R&D intensity etc. Close to 20 per cent of the MNC R&D talent in India was covered as part of the study with representation from companies
headquartered in the US, Europe, Asia-pacific among other places.