Defiance Technologies targets new markets

Defiance Technologies, a Hinduja Group firm that provides integrated engineering, ERP and IT services plans to increase its staff strength from 600 to 5,000 by 2015. The ambitious staffing growth is a reflection of its business plans, a good portion of which will come from the auto industry necessitating expansion in products and new markets.

CEO Subu Subramanian has his job cut out. He says, “While we have done business with almost all the major companies in US for over the last 30 years, Defiance (acquired by the Hindujas in 2007) wants to expand in Europe and Japan. In Europe, our objective is to tap the strong base of automotive manufacturing and Germany in particular remains significantly important to us.” On the products/services side, Defiance is focusing on providing new solutions in areas like product testing, validation and weight reduction. The company says it is striving to achieve a totally digital product development process by cutting down time to market and costs significantly by minimising prototyping and physical testing requirements. This convergence and co-existence of virtual and physical world could be very unique to Defiance. Defiance Technologies sees good business opportunity in the auto industry’s challenge to launch all new products at a faster pace. A key area of validation solution is four-poster testing of vehicles. Defiance recently provided technology to test a High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) in the US.

Defiance says this will help OEMs expedite their product development plans. It is achieved through computer-controlled simulated testing. As a first step road, load data is captured and correlated. Subsequently, the vehicle is subjected to this loading on a four- or six-poster. This is a very reliable and highly accelerated testing methodology and can be completed within 2-3 weeks as against 4-6 months that it currently takes. For passenger car testing, only four posts are used while multiaxle vehicles use six.

As part of its package for OEMs, Defiance also has made some progress in exhaust system design. Its solution helps OEMs meet up to Euro 6 norms and claims to cut the EGR/SCR system development time by "almost 40 percent". Defiance is also building its capabilities keeping in mind the captive customers like Ashok Leyland and the Nissan-Ashok Leyland JV may well look to tap its expertise to develop and launch products at a competitive pace.

Unlike some IT firms which also do significant hi-tech IT work for automotive clients, Defiance has added top-notch talent with manufacturing background. One of them is Jayant Thatte, whose last role before joining Defiance was as head of the Tata Indica car plant.

Even as it adds solutions for automotive OEMs, Defiance also plans to make inroads into defence and high tech equipments. Subramanian and his team are busy working on solutions to integrate ‘Shopfloor to top floor’ where various facets of the engineering, manufacturing and enterprise processes of the organisation would be seamlessly connected.

The acquisition of Defiance was a big booster dose for the Hinduja group. Now it is scouting for more. Subramanian says, “While we are growing organically, Defiance is exploring options of inorganic ways of growth in aerospace, defence and sustainability solutions. In medium to long-term Defiance will focus on landing gear systems, electrical systems and hydraulic systems of aircrafts," concludes Subramanian.