JK Tyre to consolidate its R&D at Mysuru

JK Tyre & Industries, a tyre manufacturer, is consolidating all its research and development (R&D) activities in one place at Mysuru.

“The company currently has multiple R&D centres at Mysuru, Faridabad, IIT-Madras and IIT-Kharagpur. Now we want to house all in one place at Mysuru, which is close to our OE Manufacturers and they are predominantly based in South India,” VK Misra, Technical Director, JK Tyre & Industries told BusinessLine.

“The R&D centre named Raghupati Singhania Centre of Excellence (RPSCOE), was inaugurated in 2018. To strengthen it, the company is increasing capital expenditure (capex) by ₹100 crore in addition to the ₹200 crore already committed when the R&D centre in Mysuru was set up,” he added.

The capex is on upgrading the technology centre and bulk of it is to procure additional equipment to ramp up R&D infrastructure to enhance testing and product development capabilities.

“The Mysuru centre will continue its collaboration with IIT-Madras and IIT-Kharagpur. Here with IIT, company is on a public-private research collaboration revolving around dynamics and simulation,” he said.

According to Misra, R&D centre at Mysuru will be a centralised centre with 180 people and is poised for expansion. The city was selected for the centre as the company has three plants, besides there is also a conducive atmosphere and ambience for research and creativity.”

Currently the company invests 1 to 1.5 per cent of its turnover on R&D.

At the moment, the company is working on to develop tubeless tyres for trucks with higher fuel efficiency while there is also development of tyres for the electric vehicle (EVs) segment which is still in the nascent stage in India but poised for growth. “We are technology-ready to provide tyres for the EV segment and have offered the new tyres to manufacturers engaged in development of EVs like Mahindra and Nissan,” Misra said.

Talking on the changing tyre industry regulations, Mishra said the company is taking the lead to get ready for star rating system for the tyre industry. star rating system is being designed on the lines of power consumption in ACs and refrigeration sector. The star rating system for tyre industry is implemented by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency and Petroleum Conservation Research Association.