Walk into the John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore and you could be forgiven for thinking you have strayed into Q division – the laboratory dedicated to inventing new gadgets – from a James Bond film.

In one area of General Electric's 1m-square-foot research and development centre, named for the company's former chief executive, scientists are testing a special “pedestrian-safe” bumper bar for cars, which can hit people at speed without maiming them. Elsewhere, boffins are working on locomotive engines that run on methanol extracted from grass growing alongside India's railway lines, and on super-compact medical equipment that costs a fraction of the price of similar products in the west.

Opened in 2000 with 275 scientists and engineers, today the centre employs 4,300 – or one in six of GE's researcher “technologists” worldwide. This year, this ratio will increase to one in four, according to Guillermo Wille, the centre's managing director.