Hyderabad: DuPont, the global products and services company has announced plans to invest over Rs100 crore to establish its research and development (R&D) centre in Hyderabad called the DuPont Knowledge Center. This would be the company's first R&D Centre in India and is expected to accommodate more than 300 scientists and other employees.

It will be the sixth major DuPont R&D facility outside US, after Shanghai, China; Utsunomiya, Japan; Hsinchu, Taiwan; Wuppertal, Germany and Meyrin, Switzerland.

DuPont has appointed Dr Homi Bhedwar, as director for the India Knowledge Center.

Prior to relocating to Hyderabad, Dr Bhedwar held R&D leadership positions in DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies' businesses at the company's headquarters in Wilmington, Del., US.

The DuPont Knowledge Center in India will focus on discovery research as well as applications development in a variety of areas, said DuPont senior vice president and chief science & technology officer Dr Uma Chowdhry.

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. It has more than 4,400 scientists and engineers.