Essar Steel, India’s second largest automotive steel supplier, is stepping up its R&D efforts and investment to develop new products for the auto segment. It plans to invest in a continuous annealing line for automotive grade steel. “We are also thinking of other possibilities of augmenting the existing lines and go for high strength steels,” says Dr M Venkatraman, senior VP and head – product development and application, Essar Steel. The company has invested around Rs 40 crore on R&D, out of which 70 percent has been spent on product development. Most R&D expenditure goes towards product development costs.

Around a fifth of Essar Steel’s total production is supplied to automotive clients. Essar Steel’s production stood at 4.2 million tonnes of finished steel in 2012-13. It supplies to at least a dozen vehicle OEMs in India, and a few component makers too. Essar’s automotive steel business has shown a CAGR of 20 percent over the last 5 years.

Read our exclusive interview with Dr M Venkatraman