Global technology R&D companies in India will give salary hikes of about 12.6 per this year. This is marginally lower than 13 per cent given in 2011.

Attrition at these centres dipped in 2011 at 17.4 per cent compared with 21 per cent the previous year.

A compensation and benefit study by consulting firm Zinnov says that globally R&D investments increased by 8.2 per cent in 2011 over the previous year. More than one-third of the top 1,000 R&D spenders are already in India. Adobe, Ericsson, EMC, Cisco, Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM and Intel are some of them.

Variable pay in 2010 was 6-9 per cent for junior employees and 10-15 per cent for seniors. In 2011, this was at 5-12 per cent for juniors and 12-20 per cent for seniors. Over 80 per cent of the companies in 2011 had joining bonus as an employee-retention tool.

There are 718 multinational company R&D centres in India. The current R&D talent base of two lakh engineers is growing at 9 per cent annually for the last five years. This pool has increased due to migration from other industries, software professional returnees and new engineering graduates.

The average employee experience at MNC R&D centres is 5.7 years. Only about 6 per cent of the total employee base has more than 12 years' experience.

These centres are also looking beyond Bangalore and the National Capital Region and expanding into tier-2 cities such as Coimbatore and Madurai. In fact, Bangalore, which was home to almost two-thirds of the R&D centres five years back, now houses 43 per cent of MNC R&D centres.

Mr Praveen Bhadada, Director – Market Expansion, Zinnov, says, “Indian R&D centres are maturing into centres focussing on multicity strategy, sustained career growth for employees and improved hiring strategy.”

Zinnov analysed 62,000 employees across 82 R&D MNCs for the study.

>anjali@thehindu.co.in

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