Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Delphi to double outsourcing from India centre

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

Delphi Automotive Systems, the $26-billion world leader in mobile electronics and transportation product technology, is stepping up investments in its Indian software development centre to double its outsourcing for catering to its global customers.

In line with its commitment to invest $25 million in its Indian design and development operations, the global company has already crossed the halfway mark in 22 months, and is now ramping up its facility to have the second largest centre in the world in about 14 months.

Delphi's Technical Centre in India, located at the International Technology Park of India on the outskirts of Bangalore, has been expanded three-fold from 20,000sqft to hire and house an additional 200 software engineers by 2003-04.

"Delphi centre in India will be playing a critical role in providing embedded software solutions to Delphi Corporation's fast growing product lines, including diesel common rail engine management systems and advanced mobile multimedia systems," Delphi president Jeffrey J Owens told rediff.com in Bangalore on Monday.

Leveraging India's software expertise for its global customers, the technical centre will also design and develop embedded software for Delphi's other domain products such as gasoline powertrain, steering and braking control systems.

"Though we had started developing software products initially, we are now raising the bar to get into product engineering to enhance the functions of engine controls for gasoline (mini-car) and diesel management systems," Owens stated.

The product line will also include mobile multimedia such as telematics, speech recognition, and operating systems.

Operating as a nodal agency for Delphi's global network, the Bangalore centre enables its virtual programme teams to support the company's customer programs worldwide.

According to India technical centre director Prakash Kulkarni, software developed in Bangalore will go into engine control hardware design in the US and get manufactured in Singapore to be sold to a customer in Korea.

Being Delphi's fourth such technical centre in Asia, with the other three in Japan, Korea, and Singapore, the Indian facility will be expanded to undertake extensive testing of mechanical and electronic systems.

"The centre will be hiring specialised engineers for conducting independent tests and verification of mechanical and electrical simulation/analysis; modeling and auto-coding; algorithm development and web-based tool development," Kulkarni affirmed.

Recognising the role of Indian talent in driving Delphi's growth, Owens said the software content in automobiles and transportation sector has been increasing about 20 per cent annually to ensure greater safety, higher emission norms, fuel economy and higher performance.

"Delphi plays a major role in not only increasing the level of automation in the emerging automotive models, but also in adding extraordinary features to make driving or travelling on the road a fun, with the latest electronic gizmos offering an wholesome entertainment," Owens claimed.

Though the growth of the automobile and transportation sectors have been flat in the developed countries over the last couple of years, Delphi has, however, seen a phenomenal increase in its sales as OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), third-party vendors, and ancillary units have gone into overdrive to modernise their products for greater safety, stricter emission norms and maximum fuel-saving technologies.

Incidentally, Delphi has so far invested about $100 million in its India operations to set up manufacturing subsidiaries at Gurgaon in Haryana for wiring harnesses, catalytic converters, evaporator canisters and oil filters; at Greater Noida near Delhi for making shock absorbers and struts and heat exchangers; at Halol in Gujarat for front corner modules; at Bangalore for half shafts and steering columns, and a joint venture with TVS Motors at Chennai for diesel injection equipment.

Delphi country president and managing director Ravi Khanna said the manufacturing units, employing around 1,370 people, had been set up in India to supply components and accessories to all leading Indian two-wheeler, automotive and transport vehicle manufacturers.

Delphi's Indian subsidiary has reported a sales turnover of Rs 700 crore (Rs 7 billion) during the last fiscal year (2001-02).

Owens said Delphi, which currently has 920 software engineers worldwide, was making 1.1 million integrated circuits every day in a new world where automobile parts were using microchips to guide emission control, fuel efficiency and new features.

Software power was growing in automobiles, with new models containing one megabit of data compared with 0.5 three years ago, and the figure is expected to double again in two years, he said.

ALSO READ:
More Money Headlines