Billionaire Bill Gates has urged India to move away from low-cost labour toward high-end research and development to keep its IT sector competitive.
On a visit to New Delhi, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp called on the Indian government to speed up its commitment to R&D and to boost the number of home-grown PhD students.
He told a panel discussion on Friday that India's "IT success story" should strive to add value and move away from low-cost labour as other developing countries catch-up.
India produces 100 computer science PhDs a year - a fraction of those in China or the United States - and exports a large number of students abroad.
R&D lags behind the United States and China, which has more than 1100 R&D centres compared to less than 800 in India.
