The Hindu Business Line : Growing demand for computer aided engg specialists

There is a growing demand for Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) specialists in India not only with Indian manufacturers, but also global industrial giants establishing units here for carrying out design validation work, according to Mr Pavan Kumar, Managing Director, Altair Engineering India Pvt. Ltd, Bangalore.

Mr Pavan Kumar said his company, which specialises in the development of high-end, open CAE software solutions, has launched a nationwide exercise to create awareness among the engineering educational institutions about the need for enhancing the skill sets of the students in CAE technology to meet the industries' needs.

Training period

Speaking to Business Line here, Mr Pavan Kumar said the Indian arm of the US-based Altair Engineering would soon be the largest Altair office worldwide, overtaking the staff strength of even the parent company in the US. He said during the staff ramp up, it found that there was a gap between skills acquired by the engineering students during their study and the skill sets the company required. It took more than six months to train the students and the company wanted this to be drastically cut. His company was willing to make available the software tools in produced at highly subsidised rates to the engineering educational institutions in India to help them mould students to be employment-ready when they complete their courses.

Cost factor

Mr Pavan Kumar said his company had priced the base software package at about Rs 5 lakh for educational institutions that would cost in the market Rs 40-50 lakh. During the first year, the company would provide free upgrades and the colleges could opt for maintenance contracts. It wanted the tools to be `explainable' to the students by the teachers and was in the process of bringing out `ready-made cook-book type material'.

Mr Pavan Kumar said the demand for trained `CAE engineers is exploding' and according to an impromptu survey conducted by his company the demand was around 10,000 trained CAE engineers a year in India itself. He said that manufacturing industries such as automobile, aerospace, heavy engineering and consumer durables required CAE technology since it helped in manufacturing highly advanced products faster and in cutting down the product development cost.

This in turn has generated a huge demand for skilled manpower in key economies of the world.

He said what had held back the growth of the sector in the past was the reluctance of the US and European companies that owned products copyrights to shift the design outsourcing work to India.

The `engineering outsourcing wave' that has hit the Indian shores has moved away from the traditional Computer Aided Design (CAD) domain, which continues to play a dominant role, to the design validation phase.

He added that his company would organise the seminars in 14 cities across India in two months and expected around 300 colleges to attend them.

Mr Pavan Kumar said there was potential for CAE, there was requirement for such engineers and the tools for equipping the engineers were also now available. The ideal one-time investment needed by a college would be in the range of Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. His company was willing to commit resources not only to sell CAE software but also to see that the tools were used by students. It would also run `train the trainers programme' to educate the teachers.

Mr Pavan Kumar said several foreign companies such as EADS, Boeing, GM, Ford and GE either have a design centre in India or wanted to have one. The demand for CAE analyst would come from those doing virtual validation job and their number was `exploding'. The lower cost and higher quality of Indian experts would work to their advantage. He expected the huge CAE manpower demand to continue for some years to come in the mechanical engineering domain that might later on move to other branches like electronics.

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