Q: Beyond the obvious megatrends of CASE or ACES, anything else that seems to be emerging as a sub segment or is there any new trend altogether?
Other than the ACES, I would say OTA (over-the-air update) technology is catching up since the yearly updates come much faster than expected. And with 5G coming in, that will be a good enabler. And along with that, we’ll also come up with the requirement of cybersecurity.
It’s not a new megatrend, but I think with this enabling, which is happening fast and with latency, and other topics coming along with 5G, this will be a big enabler for a lot of topics, in addition to autonomous mobility. Even if you look at the V2X that we have been talking about, I think we are not really very successful right now, because of the speed that we have. So I think those things will catch up faster. But at the same time, it also has the flip side of the security issues.
Q; So, more features with OTA updatability?
If you look at the car, it’s an IoT device on wheels. It will be kind of a smartphone. The older phones did not have updates, now we have periodic updates and more features are getting added. I think the automobile also will move to something like that. It’s already partly like that, now that we are using it for certain patches, certain fixes, and so on.
Q: But is it not limited largely to the infotainment system?
Yeah, but I’m sure that with HPC (High Performance Computers), and many other topics coming in, we will use more of such features.
Q: What are the other changes that happen at a more fundamental level?
One is that the entire business model is changing. We need to have a lot of modularity, flexibility, and scalability. I think that needs to come in the hardware and in the software. And as a tier-one supplier, we should be able to play any kind of model. We can’t tell that you take the entire system from us. It doesn’t work. Maybe you have hardware coming from a competitor, software from here, or vice versa.
I think it’s going to be a more level playing field (in the industry). It may not be great from Continental’s perspective because we have been having a monopoly in certain areas and so on. But overall, I think there is a place for everybody to contribute. This means that the business models also change accordingly.
Thirdly, there is also a need for a lot of standardisation. This means, for example, if you look at electrification, there are not even standardised batteries. For cybersecurity, maybe we have some part of standardisation, but a lot more to go. So I think if you need to have this plug and play ecosystem, standardisation is very important.
Q: How’s the development process evolving?
The development process itself is globalised now, and especially with COVID, the boundaries are shrinking more. How do we do a lot of things through simulation and virtualisation to reduce the development time, with as much front loading as possible? When you look at the V cycle, the first half of the V, how do you conclude it, along with an agile concept, because many customers are now looking at co-development and joint development concepts and others? These are some of the changes in the past 10 years and the pace has accelerated a lot.
Q: Any anecdotes or examples of developments, things which reflect the growing level of agility or growing need for agility?
One is, as I mentioned, this plug and play concept, and then we are not doing everything together. The second thing is the changing market needs. And the third is the speed. How do you really adapt to them without compromising on the quality? You need to have a lot of agility. When I talk about agile, it’s really agile projects, agile rules, and an agile mindset. So the conventional or the classical roles of who is the boss, who’s the subordinate, what is the leader, everything is changing. So you have more of a scrum methodology coming in. And then you know, if you have got agile leaders, their qualifications have to be different.
Q: What are the challenges that you see as a technologist now? What are the challenges that you see in terms of the industry progressing to the next level of technology adoption?
For me talent is a challenge. You need stable talent. For example, for TCI (Technical Centre India) my mantra is, I want to convert it from a best cost location to a best value location. Over the past 10 years, I think, we have progressed in value and in volume, but how do we turn ourselves as the best value location, where I want to reach in 2025. That is my mission. For that the key pillar is talent.
The issue that we have is because of the market rates, recognition and all that. We are talking about a high amount of fluctuation. That will be a big challenge for us to take it forward and that’s where we have a lot of focus on.
Q: At what rate do you plan to recruit engineers in your Bengaluru tech centre, to keep pace with the evolving industry trends?
We have close to 4600 people now, and by the end of the year, we should be close to 5000. And we have good projections for next year around the same percentage, I would say looking good now. It again depends on how you play this game.
If you have Romania and Mexico and other countries, how can we play the talent game would be the biggest differentiator.
The second thing is how fast we are able to ramp up the competencies. The third thing is how we can bring maximum engineering efficiency into the centre. I think these three would be the differentiators for India.
Q: What, according to you, is the next big thing in the Indian market in the automotive space?
I think ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) will come in a big way. Now it’s kind of a push market, but when we have more awareness from the consumers, we can see that more of these features people will start asking for. It will be the same for two-wheelers also. But obviously we need to understand it’s a much more price conscious market. Therefore, we also are looking at certain product tweaking as the global products may not directly work here.
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