Chennai: ‘Jawa motorcycles will make their grand re-entry to the country by the end of this fiscal,’ said Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd Managaing Director Pawan Goenka at an event held in the city organised by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) India.
He spoke this at the inaugural event of the 37th FISITA World Automotive Congress 2018 held for the first time in India in its 70-year history. The event is the automotive industry’s largest biennial global confluence.
Speaking about India’s R&D capabilities, Pawan, said, “While India isn’t a mainstream R&D player, it will soon embrace it. We are little slow in IPRs but we will catch up with the trend. Tier one suppliers are fast setting up their R&D centres here which is proof of our growth in this area. For example, we at Mahindra and Mahindra have 75 patents for our recently launched Marazzo which is built on an unique architecture. Same way, GM and GE have their own R&D centres developing a lot of new stuff.”
With the theme “Disruptive Technologies for Affordable and Sustainable Mobility”, the event will be hosting four plenary sessions in which experts from India and abroad will address key disruptions in the automotive industry namely autonomous, connected, electric, shared mobility and a concluding panel discussion on policy frame for disruptive technologies.
Two leaders forums would find answers to major questions in front of automotive industry. There will be 75 technical sessions, for 305 latest research papers selected out of over 1,200 abstracts submitted by authors across the world.
Adding about the role of startups, Pawan, said, “Soon the automotive sector will witness a technology disruption lead by startups. We are firms know which technology succeeds and which one fails so we won’t try. But startups don’t have this differentiation and they will keep on trying each and every thing. At one point of time, the technology which would have been proved a failure would succeed and revolutionise the industry. This is the disruption I am talking about.”
During the event, the student congress witnessed 35 researches by students from national and international universities. An educator’s forum would focus on how to bridge the gap between academia and industry and steps needed to turn institutes into innovative solution providers for the automotive industry.
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, CTO – Farm Equipment Sector, Aravind S Bharadwaj, Renault Nissan Technology & Business Centre India, Product Engineering DVP, N Balasubramanian and SAE International Global Advisor and FISITA Americas, VP, Murli lyer were among others present.