Play the gold rush through shovel suppliers

With vehicles steadily turning into ‘smartphones on wheels’, the pure-play software integrator seems to have a long runway for growth

The coming decade is likely to witness the automotive industry undergoing a sea change.

The catalysts for this change will be four mutually reinforcing trends – connected, autonomous, shared and electric (CASE).

Connected: Vehicles are starting to communicate with each other and other sources while travelling. It enables diagnostics, over-the-air updates, payments, maps, infotainment and more.

Autonomous: This trend focuses on advanced driver-assistance features, such as reverse park assist, blind-spot detection, etc., to avert accidents.

Shared: This trend revolves around on-demand services like Ola and Uber driven by consumers’ preference for avoiding an outright purchase.

Electric: This trend has emerged on the back of growing environmental concerns, rising fuel costs and the advancement in energy storage and mix, which has significantly lowered the cost of renewable energy.

All these trends have transformed vehicles into ‘smartphones on wheels.’ At the core of the automobile now lies electronics in the forms of electronic control units (ECUs), sensors and advanced chipsets that work with millions of lines of codes. The traditional forte of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) has been disrupted.