Larsen & Toubro has said India needs a single domestic standard for the data that connected vehicles generate, and that it intends to supply it.
"At this point, the country does not have a credible Indian player providing scale and alternative for the government to make it as one standard, and that is what is our aim, to provide that one credible standard to say, this is the standard for India and it has to be sovereign," said Prashant Chiranjive Jain, who heads the group's Electronic Products and Systems division. "It cannot be penetrated by or held by a technology player outside India."
Jain, who is also managing director of L&T Vyoma, was speaking at a briefing on Wednesday on L&T EPS Mobility, the group's automotive unit. His remark came in answer to a question on spectrum for vehicle-to-everything communication, or V2X, the set of technologies that allows vehicles to exchange data with one another, with roadside infrastructure and with the cloud.
The timing is live. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issued a consultation paper on V2X on 30 April, proposing 50 megahertz in the 5.875 to 5.925 gigahertz band, of which 30 megahertz would be set aside for vehicle-to-vehicle communication and 20 megahertz for vehicle-to-infrastructure.
The Department of Telecommunications followed in June with a framework for licence-exempt use of the band. The architecture for connected mobility in India has not been settled.
Jain's argument rests on assets held across four L&T entities. L&T Semiconductor Technologies, the group's chip design arm, has built a controller for brushless direct current motors and a Wi-Fi chip for two- and three-wheelers. It joined the imec automotive chiplet programme in April, absorbed the chip design firm SiliconCH in March, launched a cellular internet-of-things module on Qualcomm silicon in January, and signed an agreement this month with Azuremoto on silicon carbide power devices, which are used in electric vehicle inverters and chargers.
The electronics division supplies telematics on 4G and is moving to 5G. L&T Vyoma, which Jain also heads, runs the group's data centre business, with 26 megawatts of operational capacity as of FY26. L&T Technology Services carries its automotive engineering practice.
Asked whether the chain from semiconductors to cyber security to data centres would be built in-house, Jain said, "Yes, that is the ecosystem that L&T is providing."
Vehicle data is currently held in "different formats and different applications", he said, adding that connected devices ranging from electricity meters to solar inverters carry a similar exposure.
Most of the products the proposition depends on are not yet in the market. Telematics remains on 4G. The motor control unit and the integrated drive unit are due in the first quarter of 2027. Advanced driver assistance systems, which use cameras and sensors to warn drivers or intervene, will begin at basic levels and reach higher automation in two to three years, the management said. Such systems become mandatory on heavy commercial vehicles from 1 October 2027.
The field is also occupied. Global suppliers operating in India run their own connected vehicle platforms, telecom operators have an interest in the same spectrum, and vehicle manufacturers already collect and hold their own data. Bosch, which competes with L&T across several of these products, introduced third-generation silicon carbide chips in India in June and aims to push localization.
L&T said it is in regular contact with the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association and the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association as mobility policy is framed.
For scale, the group's hi-tech manufacturing segment reported revenue of ₹14,489 crore in FY26, with group revenue of over ₹2.85 lakh crore. The EPS division has board approval for about ₹5,000 crore of investment over five years. Its mobility business has one disclosed customer.