What will FCA’s $150 mn Global Digital Hub have in store for India?

India is slowly emerging as an epicentre for automotive engineering and research & development (R&D) centres. Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Honda motorcycles and a host of auto component makers like Bosch, Continental, ZF and Visteon have their centres in the country and the latest to join this club is Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA).

The automaker, on December 16, announced its plan to invest $150 million (around INR 1,103 crore) to set up an all-inclusive ‘Global Digital Hub’ named FCA-ICT in Hyderabad.

FCA has pitched this centre as a transformation and innovation hub with a vision to develop products for future mobility and sharpen efforts to enhance customer-centricity. The facility is the company’s largest Digital Hub outside of North America and EMEA.

In a media interaction, Partha Datta, Karim Lalani and Mamatha Chamarthi share their plans for this global digital hub and how it will be catering to the Indian market.

Core Focus Areas

The core vision for this centre is to drive digital transformation and build FCA ICT India will be employing 1,000 people by the end of 2021.in-house capability, competencies and domain expertise for FCA.

Karim Lalani, Director and Head of FCA ICT India highlighted, “The centre is expected to be able to own end-to-end capabilities. We have been relying on external providers in the past. Now we will be working to change that status from external to building internal capabilities required for FCA to be able to deliver to the customer-centric vision.”

The digital hub will be focussing on core emerging technologies, robotics, process automation, data analytics, cloud services. “We are working on developing platform-based capabilities like Salesforce and Pega integration,” noted Lalani.

FCA ICT India will be employing 1,000 people by the end of 2021 and has plans to increase hiring over the next two to three years. The automaker will be interacting with universities, within India and Telangana as well as startup community accelerators to be able to tap into the talent pool.

“We will be focussing on hiring more of full-stack java developers, full-stack web and mobile developers, data scientists, UX developers and those kinds of roles to staff up at the centre”, said the head of the Global Digital Hub.

Transformation of Customer Experience

As the vehicle is increasingly becoming software-defined, FCA intends to build a common software platform that can be offered across all of their brands, enabled by an infrastructure of connectivity, both on-board and off-board.

FCA currently has the Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Fiat Professional, Jeep, Lancia, Ram, SRT Maserati brands under its portfolio.

Mamatha Chamarthi, CIO, FCA, North America and the Asia Pacific elaborated, “We have an initiative that is going on for customer data platforms to collect all data points. Today we have collected more than 3 billion data points. We are bringing all of that together and putting machine learning models to personalise marketing campaigns, incentives and price change notifications that we send to the customers.”

The company is working towards creating a consistent omnichannel experience across all touchpoints for which FCA is constructing agile product teams between Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and North America that will be working virtually on these capabilities using the sun model, added Chamarthi.

The goal of the technology centre be it in India or North America is ultimately that doesn’t have to go to a service centre for any glitch, instead, it could be sorted through OTA (Over-The-Air) update by increasing the software storage capacity.

As the company introduces advance connectivity features into the Jeep compass, the Indian customers will see these features coming to them.

Partha Datta, President and Managing Director, FCA India underlined, “We have upcoming products that certain electrical hardware which needs to be validated. The centre in Chennai, as well as the digital hub, will be equipped to do electrical validation. So when there are local features that we are including and that particular feature doesn’t work due to some hardware or software discrepancy, that integration is going to be very easily done at the electrical validation lab or centres in the Chennai and the digital hub.”

There is information technology side of it but then there is also a hardware component side, added Datta.

On Electrification

Talking about FCA’s electrification plans, the company’s head shared, “ As far as EVs are concerned, FCA continues to study the opportunity for EVs in the Indian market which includes obviously electric vehicles but we are also exploring opportunities of all kinds whether its features or other things.”

The automaker has a designated roadmap and the required technology on the shelf but due to range anxiety and infrastructure constraints which have result in low demand for electric cars in the country, FCA has not taken a call yet.

Datta remarked, “Our fingers are on the pulse and as the structure proliferates, we will be ready to come up with the right products.”

The company has a joint venture vehicle and powertrain manufacturing facility in Ranjangaon in Maharashtra and its engineering and product development centres in Pune and Chennai.

It manufactures Jeep Compass SUV in Ranjangaon and exports the model to 13 international right-hand drive markets, including Japan and Australia.