Outsourcing: Ravi Pandit, Chairman And Group CEO, KPIT Cummins (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: And also entrepreneurs who play into that system; very interesting. So, are you seeing interesting developments in the area of location based services? We are seeing lots of location based services as they plug into the mobile phone and the GPS, the confluence of GPS and mobile phone and all sorts of infotainments.

Ravi Pandit:  Yes. Enormous applications, yes, enormous applications. Earlier, [I said] that the car is an instrument which takes you from place A to place B. But now the question that comes up is, hey while you are you in that place, while you are inside the car, what other things should it do for you? You probably know that recently Ford has come out with a concept car where while you are driving, it will check your blood pressure or your basic health parameters. So, if you are going to sit in there for an hour or two hours a day, how can you best use that time? Can that car tell you something or you will see there are these whole positioning based applications that are coming in. So, with these little applications coming in, enormous opportunities for new entrepreneurs to be in this area.

SM: What are your thoughts about user interface in the automotive sector? In my experience, the user interface sucks still.

RP: Yes. Essentially now cars are coming out with what they call exterminal mode. One option could be the car owner provides the screen and you decide your user interface. It will give you the flexibility that you want.

SM: Can I expect to see an iPhone like this, a device that is based on the Apple IOS, inside my car so that I can just basically navigate through a familiar interface that I know already?

RP: Absolutely.

SM: Who has that kind of a car right now?

RP: People are working on these applications. I am not saying they are in the market today, but these are the applications which are on the drawing board. The infotainment platform that I talked about earlier is essentially based on this device. And tomorrow, for example, if you stop liking iPhone and you want to be on Android, you don’t have to change your car.

SM: That’s right; that’s exactly where I would like to be. The reason this is so top of my mind right now is because I am about to switch cars.

RP: So, the whole part process is how can your car be rejuvenated without your having to change your car?

SM: At a software level, a software upgrade versus a hardware upgrade.

RP: Yes, absolutely.

SM: And who do you think in your client base, and based on your visibility into the industry, who are the thought leaders amongst the major OEMs and the major car vendors who are really pushing the companies.

RP:  Well, different companies have different focus areas. For example, if you look at Ford; Ford, with the Sing platform, has done quite well on the electronic side. If you were to look at Mercedes, they do a significant work on the safety side. That is their USP. If you were to look at BMW, the whole focus has been the fun of driving. So, the power train is actually designed separately to give you more fun in driving. If you were to look at the the GPS etcetera, GM has been doing good work with On Star. If you were to look at electrification, again, Renault has been putting their significant energies in that area. Different car makers are using different parts of electronic technologies to differentiate themselves.

SM: Yes, and given that you have all this expertise that’s building in your, I guess Pune – largely Pune and Bangalore operations – let’s say you are developing specialized expertise in safety or developing specialized expertise in infotainment, to what extent do you take ideas or innovations that you have developed for one client to the other clients or is it all kind of IP (intellectual property) protected?

RP: No, because it is IP protected; it is ours which we can take to any client.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Outsourcing: Ravi Pandit, Chairman And Group CEO, KPIT Cummins
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