India will shortly become the largest tech centre for agricultural and construction equipment manufacturer Case New Holland (CNH Industrial) Global Chief Information and Digital Officer Marc Kermisch told ET, adding that the talent in the country touches every single aspect of the Group’s ecosystem. CNH – which has 600 engineers working at the India Technical Centre (ITC) in Gurugram (Haryana) – is in the process of hiring an additional 400 over the next 12-24 months. “India is already 6X larger (in size than the average R&D centres globally) and will be quickly 10X larger. It will truly become our largest centre. The contributions that the team here is making are so critical for our ability to bring our products to market we’re becoming more and more reliant on the talents that are coming out of our ITC”, Kermisch said.
CNH Industrial, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has more than 50 R&D Centres across the world with team strength ranging from 25-100 personnel at each location. The company inaugurated its India Technology Center in Gurugram last year, and rapidly ramped up operations to equip it with the latest tech and capabilities including an innovation center, vehicle simulation and a Extended Reality/Virtual Reality lab to support global technology-led projects.
Kermisch said CNH Industrial initially focused on recruiting engineers in the country to add on to the product development teams, but eventually expanded the scope of work here to build cloud-based software applications, IT capabilities for the global business. “It is extremely difficult in the rest of the world to find good mechanical, electronic, hydraulic engineers. And India’s producing them every single day. Effectively, the talent in India can touch every single aspect of our ecosystem, from building systems that run our back offices, to helping design the vehicles that we sell to our customers, building the software those customers use to control the vehicle, as well as manage the data that comes off of it”, Kermisch said.
On the manufacturing side, CNH Industrial is considering expanding the portfolio of agri equipments it manufactures locally. Given the growing clamour over clean mobility solutions worldwide, Kermisch said the company is considering leveraging India as a manufacturing hub for making small electric tractors.
He informed, “We have actually got several R&D projects going on right now, bringing electric motors to 25, 35, 45 and 55 horsepower tractors, which is the sweet spot for the Indian consumer. Those will be available and in some cases, probably even manufactured here.” CNH Industrial primarily manufactures electric tractors at Detroit, Michigan, and hybrid electric tractors at Austria, (Europe), at present.
Kermisch said while low horsepower vehicles/equipments (up to 75 HP) such as small tractors, mini excavators manufactured by the company will be fully electrified going forward, midsize vehicles (80-150 HP) will come with hybrid technology to boost efficacy of the internal combustion engine. Meanwhile, larger equipments such as excavators or sugarcane harvesters will run on biofuels to meet regulatory requirements and cut down on carbon emission.
