‘Make in India’ not merely lip service for Ashok Leyland

A substantial portion of that has gone into the development of next generation products such as the BS-VI compliant vehicles and electric vehicles, says Seshu Bhagavathula, the CTO of the commercial vehicle (CV) major.

“We have allocated 4-digit sum for BS-VI project. As many as 1,800 staff are in R&D working on innovative developmental projects. For three years, 1,000 people are purely involved in BSVI development that translates to 3,000 man years,” he says, and adds a major portion of the R&D investment has gone towards buying testing equipment. 

Unlike many other entities in the CV space that rely on parent companies to work on R&D while it buys the licence and operates, Ashok Leyland has had to develop everything from scratch. 

“We are the only company to operate in India, where products are developed by Indians for the market in India. We are 100 per cent ‘Make in India’. The IP belongs to us,” the veteran R&D head says. 

Whether it is developing for one vehicle or a million trucks, the R&D efforts of the company has given it an edge that has made it possible to strike alliances with major players. In one such case, it has a technical co-operation with Japan’s Hino Motors to develop six-cylinder engines for BS-VI vehicles. That being a small market of 200 trucks or so, Ashok Leyland found it prudent to have such a technical tie up under which it gets royalty for the H-series engines. The Mutual Cooperation Agreement allows it to lend support in developing Hino’s engine parts purchased in India for global operations. 

Talking about futuristic technologies, he cites a business case for driver assistance systems. India, for instance, fares poorly on the accidents front. Annually, 5 lakh people lose their lives. Poor driving conditions and bad road infrastructure have contributed to casualties. But there is also the loss of goods. Every time an accident takes place, goods worth crores could be lost, he says. So it makes sense to employ driver assistance systems using technology that cost as little as Rs 20,000 to prevent accidents. 

Bhagavathula said the use of Big Data has given the company an opportunity to leverage predictive analytics. “We have decades of data, on say suspension and axles. We break and test suspension to provide predictive reliability. Such R&D enables us to say 20 per cent ahead of time, when repairs might be due.”