In a first-of-its-kind move, Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solution India, the subsidiary of Bosch GmbH, has created an independent unit to manage its business of non-Bosch customers. This entity, called Software and Digital Solutions or SDS, will focus on delivering software and digital services in the areas of digital enterprise, engineering R&D, new age technologies ( e.g. AI, AR/VR, Blockchain etc.).
“Our restructuring initiative started in Q2, 2020. For us it is more about being able to anticipate future demand and be where we are needed. This change we are putting in place now is one of the largest changes that RBEI has undertaken since its inception, around 25 years ago,” said Dattatri Salagame, president and MD, RBEI India.
One of the aspect of the restructuring was to look at how RBEI can be best positioned in terms of capability, competencies, business models, working engagements and scale, so that it continues to play a dominant role in product engineering at Bosch. “We want to take on a global leadership and responsibility role,” added Salagame.
Businesses of the future are expected to be adaptive and connected with all stakeholders. “In such an evolving face of tomorrow, there are two key areas where Bosch Software and Digital solutions aims to help our customers accelerate the Connected World to their benefit. One is to help build ‘Enterprises of the Future’ who have real-time and integrated views across the manufacturing life-cycle. The second is to build ‘Products of the Future’; they will be connected, providing real time feedback and an immersive customer experience linking the customers and partners and providing transparency across the ecosystem,” added Salagame.
In addition RBEI will also foray into non-traditional Bosch sectors like Healthcare and Energy with their products-Vivascope, Vivascreen and Phantom.
Salagame wants to tap into opportunities that are in the market. “The scale of this effort is strategic, and will be delivered through our SDS unit. For a Center that was previously a R&D center, this is a huge step, and is indicative of the enormous opportunity we see out there for our skill set,” he added.
Though RBEI is a R&D and captive centre for Bosch it has been structured slightly differently. Firstly, the India unit is a subsidiary of Bosch incorporated in 1997 and functions like an independent company within Bosch World. RBEI is the largest technology and engineering centre for Bosch outside of Germany. The India unit offer engineering, product engineering, and services to every business unit in Bosch and most products, which Bosch develops. The second aspect is that other than catering to Bosch, the India unit also works with external clients. So far about 10 per cent of RBEI’s work caters to external customers.
Since RBEI is an independent company, it has its centres in other geographies like Mexico, Vietnam and Poland. According to Salagame what differentiates RBEI to other captive units is scale. “Normally the challenge in 100 per cent classical captives is that there is a chance that they may not be able to retain competitiveness because if you don’t scale then you may not be able to stay competitive. We have 20,000 people in India and over 2,000 people in Vietnam and about 700 or 800 people in Mexico so that’s about 23,000 people for captive engineering company. That’s a very different scale compared to other captives. Also our focus has been to have a footprint in every product, every product engineering that every business unit of Bosch does and hence you find us a lot more scaled up than a classical captive is,” added Salagame.
Salagame said that while the key focus will always be to deliver engineering solutions and designing Bosch products of the future, ut now they are implementing a model to reach out to the external market in newer forms of businesses where the classical business units do not reach. The scale of this effort is strategic, and will be delivered through the new Software and Digital Solutions unit.
“One such instance is the healthcare industry. We have made good inroads in the healthcare sector…for instance our hemoglobin monitoring solution is winning recognition for both its design and usefulness in the US and also in Europe,” he added.
The need to create a special division also came out because of the rapidly changing technology landscape. The world today is rapidly evolving to a connected, digital ecosystem with everything being very closely intertwined – products, businesses and stakeholders.
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