Tuesday, June 14 2005 14:04 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Wuzburg (Germany): In an acknowledgement of India's growing status as a knowledge-based economy, German automotive giant Bosch has decided to involve Indian engineers to support its global research and development efforts.

The 40 billion-Euro giant, known for its cutting-edge technological superiority, has a dedicated research and development (R&D) facility in India, though this primarily caters to local market requirements.

"But we will see in the future an additional demand for (Indian) engineers supporting our colleagues worldwide because India has a big pool of talent," Albert Hieronimus, Managing Director of Bosch's Indian subsidiary MICO, told sources in Wuzburg.

MICO currently has a 200-engineer-strong R&D centre, mainly for products, which are supported locally.

Hieronimus said India, apart from offering high levels of technical expertise, was also attractive as the costs, including for labour, were low.

"Of course, labour cost helps Indians get a bigger share (of business)," he said.

Already, at least 40 engineers from MICO were working in Germany and servicing Bosch's customers globally.

"They are being trained there and supporting and working on projects for other worldwide customers," he said, noting that it was the "step one" of their integration into Bosch's global R&D team.

The next step, Hieronimus said, would involve the same engineers working for overseas customers, but while working for MICO.

Apart from R&D, Bosch also plans to further develop and increase its software development capacity in India. The company has a captive unit, Robert Bosch India Ltd, which was set up in 1998 and has more than 2,000 engineers.

"By the end of this year, we plan to augment the manpower in Wuzburg to over 2,500," Hieronimus said, pointing out that this was the biggest software development centre under Bosch outside Germany.

Bosch, which believes in 'growth through innovation' as its secret for success, spent 2.4 billion Euros, or 9.4 per cent of its sales, on R&D in 2004.

"Over the recent years our future-related expenditure has grown constantly, and the trend will continue in 2005," said, Bernd Bohr, Chairman Automotive Group, Robert Bosch.

In a presentation at Boxberg, near Wuzburg, he said of the 1,49,000 associates working on automotive technology, almost 18,000 were involved in R&D at the beginning of this year, 1,000 more than a year ago.

It is expected that the low-cost but high-quality labour will see Indian involvement in these efforts going up in the coming years.