Digital practises are increasingly accounting for a larger share of revenue for IT services firms. Digital has effectively cut across major core engineering verticals—manufacturing, automotive, wireless technology, logistics, and many more—with Covid-19 accelerating digital adoption. Despite Covid-19, according to a recent Zinnov report, engineering, research, and development (ER&D) spending has remained resilient, increasing by 3% year over year. It also predicted that global ER&D spending would reach $2.1 trillion by 2024, with a CAGR of 9%.
This massive opportunity has attracted IT services brands from around the world to capitalise on manufacturing, hi-tech, communications, and other verticals.
“ER&D contributes around 30% of Capgemini’s overall revenue share. We have close to 52,000 engineers and scientists in ER&D division and 40% of them are in India out of Capgemini India’s 1,50,000 workforce in the country. They serve 350 global clients. India is no longer just a low cost centre but the main innovation hub,” says Chandra Reddy, head of engineering and R&D, India, Capgemini.
Aeronautics, automotive, communications, energy utilities, industrial & consumer, life sciences, railway, infrastructure & transportation, semiconductor & electronics, software & internet, and other engineering verticals are addressed by these engineers. The ER&D division has 125 software frameworks available for licencing, all of which are developed by Indian engineers in technology centres across the country.
“This frameworks reduce the time taken for customers to develop their solution and take it to market. We have a 5G centre of excellence in Mumbai. This lab is meant for creating solutions for small industries,” says Reddy. In addition, it has been working on electric vehicles. Chip and sensor level work on these vehicles are carried out by these centres. “We have achieved drive-by-wire currently and eventually aim to achieve autonomous driving in tandem with 5G technology. We are also looking at developing components abstracted from our solutions that our customers can use to reduce their time to market,” he says.
According to him, attraction and retention of talent is the top priority today. It has signed MoUs with Indian academic institutions focusing on 14 skill-sets to ensure steady supply of fresh talent. “Semiconductor, VLSI, product line management and many other skills will be addressed via these MoUs,” says Reddy.
