Tata Motors has made it to the Top 50 league of the world’s biggest companies in terms of R&D investments, topped by German automaker Volkswagen. On the annual Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard for 2015, prepared by the European Commission, Volkswagen is followed by Samsung, Microsoft, Intel and Novartis in the Top Five.

Tata Motors has moved up from 104th position last year to 49th now and has also shown the largest increase in R&D (research and development) investment on the list. However, most of this R&D is at its UK subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover. In the expanded list of the world’s 2,500 top R&D firms, there are a total of 26 Indian companies, as against 829 from the US, 608 from the EU, 360 from Japan, and 301 from China.

Overall, India is placed 15th in terms of the number of companies on the list. Among other Indian companies, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories is ranked 404, M&M 451, Reliance Industries 540, Lupin 624, Sun Pharma 669, Cipla 831 and Infosys 884.