JLR, Tata Steel, Tata Chem win Innovista awards

MUMBAI: Tata Sons director R Gopalakrishnan today said the group's innovation forum that drives a group-wide programme to encourage, recognise and showcase outstanding ideas across group firms, will continue to drive innovations as the Rs 4-trillion group enters a new phase of growth and leadership.

He was speaking to media after announcing the winners of the 2012 edition of Tata Innovista, a programme that honours the winners of the Tata Group Innovation Forum ( TGIF) here, which received over 2,800 entries from 71 companies this year.

Gopalakrishnan also said the Tata Group spent Rs 12,500 crore on R&D in FY112. In percentage terms, this was more than double the national average of 0.65 percent, he claimed.

Though he did not put a number to what the group, which runs as many as 100 companies straddling between salt, chemicals, software, steel and auto, will spend on innovations going forward, he said money is not a consideration but innovative ideas that can give birth to cutting edge technologies that help change the lives of common man.

Tata Innovista has grown massively over the years, signifying a growing culture of innovation and risk-taking in the Group. The TGIF was launched in 2006 and in 2008 it got 282 entries from 44 Tata companies. But come 2012, the number of entries rose to 2,852 from 71 Tata companies.

For this year's awards 59 Tata companies from the country and 12 from overseas participated in the regional rounds. While Jaguar Land Rover (for a low-cost stop-start device) and Tata Steel Europe bagged the Product Innovations (for HP rail steel) award this year, Tata Technologies bagged the Service Innovations award for GPU computing..

The Core Process Innovations award went to Tata Chemicals (for DAP granulation) and Tata Steel Europe, while the Support Process Innovations award was bagged by Tata Power Delhi for developing a tool that could reduce the last mile AT&C loss.