Volkmar Denner, CEO of the Germany-headquartered Bosch Group which supplies technology and services, said that the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to be like any other industrial revolution and will lead to a shift in job qualification profiles. Denner said that AI will have the potential to create high value jobs and added that the Bosch Group was bullish about its Indian operations. “Last year we had set up an AI centre in Bengaluru, and our newly established Connected Mobility Solutions division is active in India too, where it is helping to shape the mobility of the future. We plan to invest an additional Rs 1700 crores in India in the next three years,” said Denner. He further remarked that the company has always believed in giving adequate training to its people to develop new skill sets. Though there are robots working in different set ups at Bosch, these are not meant to substitute its engineers but to make them more productive, remarked Denner.
Denner said that the Bosch Group also has a clear cut Internet of Things (IoT) strategy and majority of its electronic products are now IoT and IP enabled. “Here in India, the transformation of Bosch into a leading IoT company is especially evident. We have been investing heavily to drive this forward and our Adugodi facility in Bengaluru is being revamped from a manufacturing facility into a technology hub. Over the past three years, we have invested more than Rs 370 crores to create this campus, which houses 3650 of our 18,000 engineers in India. We are planing an additional investment of Rs 600 crores for the expansion of this Bengaluru facility,” said Denner.
Denner said that he is positive about the future of electric vehicles but he felt that a lot to be done in India to achieve the goal of going fully electric. “You have to empower the electrical grid to sustain large volumes of electric vehicle system. At the same time there is a need for adequate charging infrastructure to charge these vehicles,” he said.
Denner pointed out that internal combustion engines will continue to be the mainstream solution for freight, and passenger vehicles globally but at the same time hybrid technology will play a key role in India, particularly due to the prevalence of stop/start driving caused by traffic congestion. “We believe that the co-existence of combustion engines and electrification with hybridisation is an interim solution on the road to an electric future. We have invested Rs 3195 crore every year since the beginning of this decade in electromobility. Currently, there are more than 800,000 vehicles on the road worldwide that contain Bosch components for electrified driving. Electrification in India is expected to gain momentum via fleet operators, for which the prerequisite is shared and connected mobility. In view of this, we believe it will take off much more rapidly in the small vehicle segments,” said Denner.
Interestingly, Denner observed that India has overtaken Germany to become the fourth largest automotive market in the world and it is a high potential market for the Bosch Group. “Automobile sales in Asia’s third largest economy, including passenger and commercial vehicles, grew by 9.5 per cent last year. In 2017, the Bosch Group registered a total sales of around 2 billion euros in the Indian market which is a double-digit sales growth of 15.4 per cent in euro terms,” stated Denner.