New Delhi: As technology and softwarisation are changing the automotive industry’s landscape, technology giant Continental India plans to hire up to 1000 software engineers this year to support the business areas for its Technical Center India (TCI) in Bengaluru.
“The skill sets required would be embedded software, cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and deep learning,” Prashanth Doreswamy, president and CEO, Continental India, told ETAuto.
Set up in 2009, TCI in Bengaluru is one of Continental’s largest and key R&D locations globally, catering to both the global and the local markets. The Centre has recently extended its services to five automotive business areas including autonomous mobility, architecture and networking, safety and motion, smart mobility, and user experience.
TCI is a part of Continental’s Software and Central Technologies (SCT) organisation, and has an engineering workforce focused on multiple domains covering advanced safety technologies, autonomous driving, connected mobility technologies, and other future mobility trends. In November last year, the company inaugurated the INR 1,000-crore new campus for its TCI. Spread over 1 million sq.ft, the campus is at Bengaluru’s Electronic City Phase-II.
Doreswamy noted that Continental has about 42,000 R&D engineers globally and about 6000 of them are in India.
“India is a very important market for us. It offers a great value proposition in terms of huge infrastructure and a market where we manufacture and sell to OEMs. India also plays a big role in our global R&D. We expect this market to grow about 10-12% year-on-year for at least the next five years. As a company, we see our growth to be about 2.5X more than this,” he said.
With the evolving paradigms in the mobility industry, global technology companies are gradually upping their bets on India, leveraging the vast talent pool and eyeing the country for higher investments.
To support various global R&D projects, Tier-I supplier Magna International opened its Innovation Campus in Bengaluru this year. The company invested about USD 120 million and created 1200 technology focused positions.
Last year, ETAuto reported how global automotive supplier Marelli also planned to grow the Indian talent pool for its embedded software engineering and test capabilities by hiring 1000 engineers in India for core competencies.
Continental stated that the next set of growth areas for the company lies in ADAS-assisted functions, vehicle body electronics and vehicle architecture including HPCs, telematics, and control units gateways.
