Considering the escalating costs to upgrade the state-of-the-art R&D activities, the Institute has laid strong emphasis towards generation of resources and active collaboration with national / international industries and R&D organisations.

Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy (SRIC), a special R&D Cell, was set up in 1982 as an interface between funding agencies and the Institute to handle sponsored research projects and industrial consultancy assignments.

SRIC handles the project management job related to accounting, purchase, recruitment, and audit, does liaison with the sponsors and prepares the statutory reports/ returns. During the year 2007-2008, 196 fresh research projects were received for a total value of 109.57 crore and 169 consultancy projects for Rs. 16.77 crore were received aggregating to a total of 365 projects for total value of Rs. 126.34 crore from Government, private and international funding agencies/enterprises. Presently about 850 projects are running having an aggregate value of about Rs. 300 crore.