Delphi expands technical centre in Bangalore

Bangalore: Delphi (www.delphi.com), a world leader in mobile electronics and transportation product technology, achieved yet another milestone with the inauguration of the second phase of its Technical Centre India (TCI) located in Bangalore's International Tech Park.

Karnataka IT Minister D B Inamdar inaugurated the new facility. With this expansion, the floor space, including offices and test laboratories, will increase from 20,000 sq ft to over 60,000 sq ft. The expansion will allow Delphi to increase staffing at TCI to more than 350 engineers.

This centre plays a critical role in fulfilling the demand for embedded software in many of Delphi Corporation's fastest-growing product lines. These include diesel common rail engine management systems and advanced mobile multimedia systems. Other significant products supported by TCI include gasoline power train, steering and braking control systems. Embedded software is integral to the technological leadership demonstrated by Delphi in these products.

Delphi Delco Electronics president Jeff Owens, who has been involved with the Bangalore TCI from the initial planning stage, was present at the inauguration. Owens said: "Delphi is very proud of the accomplishments at TCI. When we opened this centre 22 months ago, the focus was clearly on software development. As it grows, we will expand the scope of our activities into product engineering. Initially, the emphasis will be on a range of engine controls for both gasoline and diesel engine management systems, along with additional mobile multimedia products. I am confident that TCI will be just as successful in this endeavour."

Elaborating on the expansion, Delphi TCI director Prakash Kulkarni said: The centre's present strength in software development is being complemented with mechanical, electrical and systems engineering skills. We are also adding mechanical test facilities. TCI is thus poised to contribute further to Delphi's global product development activities."

Speaking on the occasion, Delphi India country president and managing director Ravi Khanna said: "India has emerged as a talent pool of highly-skilled resources for Delphi. Our software engineers at the Bangalore centre are equipped to meet the rigorous and complex demands of the automotive domain."

The centre operates as a node on Delphi's global network, enabling virtual programme teams to support customer programmes around the world. For example, the software developed at TCI, Bangalore, for a piece of engine control hardware designed in the US, might be manufactured in Singapore and sold to a customer in Korea," Khanna said.

TCI is also slated to become a centre of expertise for the development of web-based tools to automate engineering and business processes in Delphi Delco. The Bangalore centre complements Delphi's strong manufacturing base in India and the rest of the Asia Pacific region. The company's other technical centres in Asia, which do component design and applications engineering, are in Japan, Korea and Singapore.