ZF India’s state-of-the art India Technology Centre (ITC) has completed one year of operations. The India Technology centre was inaugurated last year in March in the presence of K T Rama Rao, 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 percent 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.

In the past year, the ITC has effectively established its systems and processes for consistent delivery of packages in line with ZF global standards. The facility has been 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. Over the past year, it has expanded the workforce by  400 talented engineers. More than 50 percent of the engineers at the ITC have come from global multinational companies; 30 percent of them are postgraduates and more than 80 percent of ITC engineers have over four years of work experience. ZF ITC plans to hire another 1,100 people by 2020.

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 organisation. 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.”

Raghav Gulur, managing director ZF India Technology Centre, said, “Digitalisation and advance software development is one of the key undertakings for ZF. We at the India Technology Center are going to play a significant role in realising this vision. Currently, about 30 percent 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”