Tech That! - India is becoming the auto R&D hub for the world

The heightened level of connectivity, software and electronic contentin vehicle architectures of the futureis driving global automotive players to augmentinvestments into R&D and stateof-the-artinfrastructure. Indiais emerging as a dream destination for developing these new-age technologies writes Mayank Dhingra.

Over the past six months, there has been a flurry of global automotive players expanding their research and development R&D) operations, particularly those in the software, engineering, and electronics domains, in the country. Many of these leading automotive MNCs have unanimously chosen the capital of Karnataka, Bengaluru, also referred to as the Silicon Valley of India, for setting up their global technical hubs.

Besides cost efficiency, the key reason behind India coming to the fore as an emerging destination for developmental work in these domains is the bevy of talent and a large pool of highly-skilled software and electronics engineers the country has to offer to enable the automotive industry's transition towards electrification.

According to KS Viswanathan, Vice President, Industry Initiatives, NASSCOM, India is home to 5.1 million engineers working in the technology space and of this, one million are in the engineering research and development ER&D) ecosystem. Approximately 6,00,000 people are working in the software, embedded systems, and electronics domain, and the demand for this skillset is growing at a rate of 33 percent every year.”

“The global automotive industry is projected to demand 1,50,000 software engineers in the near future and India offers huge potential to supply qualitative engineers in scale”’

From US-equity-giant KKR-backed Marelli to the Swedish Volvo Group, and more recently Magna International and BorgWarner, India is emerging as the new automotive technology hub of the world, and attracting foreign investments to develop a thriving local ecosystem of innovation and future-relevant ideas.