ZF India Technology Centre (ITC) successfully completed one year recently. The India Technology centre was inaugurated last year in March in the presence of K. T. Rama Rao, Honorable Minister for IT, MA & UD, Industries & Commerce, Government of Telangana.
Deeply integrated with the 20 main development centres of ZF worldwide, the India technology centre plays a critical support role in the area of electronics, embedded software and mechanical engineering. It is focusing on software that would amount to 70% of the R&D work and is playing a pivotal role in the development of the autonomous vehicle technology. The ITC also aims to leverage the finest talent in the country for global development projects.
Commenting on the occasion, Ms. Mamatha Chamarthi, Chief Digital Officer, ZF Friedrichshafen AG said, “The India Technology Centre within one year has become a pillar of innovation for our organization. A lot of R&D and software development work is happening at the ITC which is in tandem with our global strategies and product development. The diverse talent pool available in India is a huge boon for us and we hope to continue doing great work.”
Mr. Raghav Gulur, Managing Director- ZF India Technology Centre said, “Digitalization and advance software development is one of the key undertakings for ZF. We at the India Technology Centre are going to play a significant role in realizing this vision. Currently, about 30% of our engineers at ITC are working on the ‘Start of Production’ programs. I am confident that the R&D team based in ITC will advance to a position where they will support the R&D teams across the globe to achieve ZF’s Vision Zero – Zero Accidents and Zero Emissions”
In the last one year, the ITC has effectively established its systems and processes for consistent delivery of packages in line with ZF global standards. The ITC is all ramped up to support customer programs and has also got optimistic feedback from its corporate audit team and data security team for its standard operating procedures. Currently, ZF has more than 1,000 engineers working on development projects from India through its service partners and employees. In the last one year, it has successfully added around 400 talented engineers to its workforce at ITC. More than 50% of the engineers working at the ITC have come from global multinational companies and 30% of them are postgraduates. More than 80% of ITC engineers have four plus years of work experience. The centre plans to hire another 1,100 people by 2020.