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SKF's Indian R&D outfit is not only helping cut costs but the company is also developing new products for the global two-wheeler industry needs.
“The R&D facility in India, which started as India-centric one, has now begun to offer a lot of solutions to the global needs, besides helping the market it has been developing products for the global two-wheelers,” said Mr Rakesh Makhija, President Asia, SKF Group.
“The products developed is not only India centric, they find use in Indonesia, they go into the Brazil, they go into Thailand, they even go into Vietnam, where there is a high level of two-wheeler activity,” he added.
The company's two-wheeler R&D centre called ‘The Application Development Centre' is located in Bangalore. This centre works on motorcycles and scooters. So far the centre has developed 30 new products in the last 4-5 years.
For the group, Asia contributes 27 per cent of the global sales and 25 per cent of the global workforce, and represents roughly 25 per cent of global assets. China and India roughly contribute 70 per cent of the total sales in Asia.
According to Mr Makhija, “India's contribution is 20 per cent out of Asia. So when you cross check that, we are talking about India being roughly about, in the global perspective, roughly about 5 per cent or so or the group sales and China is about 12.5-13 per cent.”
SKF has its main R&D centre in Netherlands called Engineering Research Centre (ERC) and has conceptualised two R&D centres in Asia. Mr Makhija said “The first one is in Bangalore and the second one will soon come up in China sometime in 2012 with similar level aims and ambition with about 400 people.”
The centre in Bangalore is going to be an important part of the company's overall development process. We started with two-wheelers and it has become a pocket of excellence now. The centre in Bangalore brings the entire organization under one roof be it our industrial business, our automotive business,” said Mr Makhija.
“The Global Centre in Bangalore will in the first few years might look towards the development side on the product development, product engineering, stimulation and so on, but ultimately it will become a full fledged group R&D centre,” he explained.
The centre in India has about 400 engineers and is expected to add 100 more.
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