DKC is DuPont's First Integrated Knowledge Center outside the USA; To provide Basic Discovery Research and Applications Development
 

Hyderabad|India|November'2008: DuPont officially opened the DuPont Knowledge Center (DKC) in Hyderabad, India, seventeen months after breaking ground last summer. Located on fifteen acres in the ICICI Knowledge Park in the city’s “Genome Valley”, this newest DuPont Research & Development (R&D) site houses a Biotechnology Lab, a Materials Research Lab, an Applications Development Lab, a Global Engineering Design Center, and greenhouses.

The DuPont Knowledge Center brings together basic research, applications development, engineering design, bioinformatics, patent services, and many regional support services. Built on a “One DuPont” concept, research at the site will focus on “integrated science” – unique combinations of biology, chemistry, materials science and engineering - to develop the company’s application pipeline in India and other emerging markets.

“DuPont succeeds when we connect science and technology to the marketplace,” said Uma Chowdhry, Senior Vice President and Chief Science & Technology Officer. “We have seen time and again that we accelerate revenue growth in a region when we augment our sales presence by strengthening local technical expertise. Our goal is to develop products to meet not only the needs of people in India but also the needs of customers around the world,” Chowdhry said.

DuPont announced that it is investing over Rs 130 crores to construct its first research and development center in India with focus on basic research, product application development across all five of its business growth platforms, and other knowledge services for global and local markets. This will also house the company’s first Plant Biotech Research Center outside the USA, the first integrated Plant and Industrial Biotechnology center and the first Engineering center outside the USA. Research is already underway for Pioneer® seeds, DuPont Crop Protection and DuPont Applied BioSciences, including discovery research for the DuPont-BP biobutanol advanced biofuels program.

“I am very optimistic about the opportunities for us and India's long term growth potential,” said Balvinder S Kalsi, President and CEO, DuPont India. “The DuPont Knowledge Center is a critical component of our growth strategy and our investment in the DKC further demonstrates our commitment to India. This will enable us to increase our ‘speed to market’ with products that come out of our R&D and innovations pipeline, not only for India but also for other growth regions, and help us in our mission to become a billion dollar company,” Balvinder added.

“DKC’s value proposition is to develop sustainable solutions for India and global markets by using ‘integrated science’ to create commercial value,” says Homi Bhedwar, Director, DuPont Knowledge Center. “We will have under one roof the key sciences such as organic, inorganic, and polymer chemistry, biology, and materials science coupled with engineering to create unique and commercializable solutions” added Homi.

In his video message, Chad Holliday, DuPont Chairman and CEO, said, “The Knowledge Center is a very unique concept and is the first in DuPont. To bring together different aspects of knowledge - from research to design, to dealing with complex information sets - in one place so we collapse the time and do things much faster much better. This will create a competitive advantage for DuPont on a worldwide basis. The DKC investment is aligned to our ‘emerging markets’ growth strategy and will be an integral part of our continued growth in the Asia Pacific region. The DKC puts our science in the backyards of some of our most important customers and will increase our speed to market for new product innovations.”

Home to more than 180 DuPont employees today, the DuPont Knowledge Center is expected to accommodate more than 300 scientists and other employees by next year. About 600 scientists, engineers and other employees will eventually work out of the DKC once it is fully functional, working closely with more than 5,000 scientists of DuPont located around the world. The facility is designed in a manner that allows for future expansion-.

The DKC is the sixth major DuPont R&D facility outside the United States. DuPont has more than 50 R&D facilities throughout the world with 20 in the United States and more than 30 in 11 other nations. In addition to the Central R&D at the DuPont Experimental Station at Wilmington, USA, other major DuPont R&D facilities are located in Shanghai, China; Utsunomiya, Japan; Hsinchu, Taiwan; Wuppertal, Germany and Meyrin, Switzerland. DuPont invests an average of $1.3 billion annually on global research and development in a diverse range of technologies for many markets including agriculture, automotive, construction, electronics, chemicals and industrial materials. Today, DuPont has more than 5,000 scientists and engineers around the world.