"We need to leave our cottage industry mindset behind and benchmark ourselves with the best in the world. We must leverage the country's significant capital-cost advantages over the developed world," he said. More investments are need in research and development and it needs to be done strategically, he added. Ambani said he found it baffling that R&D spending of the country had declined from 1.1 per cent to 0.86 per cent of GNP.

"Technology leadership cannot be achieved even in strategic areas with such low level ofexpenditure on R&D," he said. Ambani suggested that the industry must first seize the immense opportunities before spreading itself thin to capture markets in remote corners of the world. The domestic chemical industry has invested heavily in capacity creation in areas such as petrochemicals which far exceed the current demand, Ambani said.