Why MRF has a tyre factory in Trichy purely for R&D  

MRF Tyres has a mini factory in Tamil Nadu’s Trichy just for the $3-billion tyre maker’s engineers to experiment by building, testing and learning from their successes and failures, its Managing Director Rahul Mammen Mapillai said at the Global Investors Meet 2024 in Chennai on Sunday.  

Less than 1% of India’s GDP goes into R&D, discussed a panel entitled ‘Young Leaders Driving Transformation in Business’ on the first day of the summit. Discussing ways to boost this, Mapillai, the fourth-generation businessman of the Chennai-headquartered firm, pointed out that businesses often mix product development and R&D, when in fact they are distinct processes. “Product development is when you are trying to meet customer requirement for the next six months. True R&D is working outside comfort zones and working in areas where you can’t assure yourself of a timeline,” he elaborated.   

R&D involves allowing engineers to experiment, get quick validation and learn from their failures and successes, he said. “To create the environment where engineers are allowed to do that, we have built a mini factory in Trichy where engineers are allowed to build what they want where there is no production pressure. In six months’ time, we have our test drive coming up right near the production unit so they can build tyres, test tyres, learn, validate and move forward.”  

The nearly 75-year-old leading tyre maker became the first Indian company to breach the Rs 1 lakh-mark in its share price about six months ago. It makes various types of tyres for passenger cars, two-wheelers, trucks, buses, tractors, light commercial vehicles, off-the-road tyres and aero plane tyres. It recently launched Steel Brace radials for high-performance motorcycles.  

 “If all of us start investing in our R&D, the ecosystem evolves to attract more investments. What we can do is to invest in infrastructure that allows engineers to excel in what they do and the best of the talent will stick on,” he said at the panel, while discussing ways to improve India’s investments into R&D.    

The firm exports tyres to over 90 markets abroad. The company manufactures rubber products including tyres, treads & tubes, sports goods paints and toys. MRF Ltd also runs the MRF Pace Foundation and the MRF Challenge Series in Motorsport. 

Also Read: Tata Power to invest Rs 55,000 crore on wind and solar power generation in Tamil Nadu