Pune-based automotive and mobility tech firm KPIT is increasing its focus on geographical adjacencies, with a particular emphasis on expanding operations in China. According to the company, this strategic move prompted international OEMs to elevate their efforts in adapting to emerging standards related to speed to market, cost-effectiveness, and innovation.
Ravi Pandit, co-founder and chairman of KPIT, said, “China is the big gorilla in the room. We worked in China for the last few years, and we are coming to grips with how we can use China for our growth. We can take learnings from China and apply them to global OEMs. For instance, the Chinese did good work on cost reduction, the e-cockpit, and certain parts of autonomous driving. We are also working with our existing OEMs in electronic architecture. Additionally, helping the Chinese OEMs in China is important because there is room for them to benefit from our tools, accelerators, and platforms,” he said.
Pandit said there is headroom for growth in embedded software relating to trucks and off-highway vehicles. The company said it has eight ongoing conversations with commercial vehicles as well as off-highway equipment. KPIT is also leveraging opportunities where OEMs are more open to collaborating and offshoring even their SDV (software-defined vehicles) programmes. Recently, KPIT partnered with Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI) to accelerate the development of SDVs. This collaboration is poised to enhance innovation, speed up product feature launches, and deliver cost advantages by leveraging KPIT’s cross-domain expertise in mobility tech.
