India has been a valued market for global automakers. German automaker Volkswagen that is quite popular in the domestic market is set to open an IT development center in Pune sometime next month. The move comes as an initiative from the company to cut down on outsourcing, improve technical knowledge and enhance in-house processes. The upcoming Pune's IT Development center is capable of housing about 1000 engineers in next couple of years.
The Volkswagen IT development center due for inauguration in about a month's time this year shall sold a capacity to about 500 people in the first phase. Speaking more on the occasion, Sidharth Yadav, Regional CIO - Asia Pacific of the VW Group said, “The centre in Hinjewadi, on the western outskirts of Pune, is a "strategic extended workbench of Volkswagen Group IT, set up with an aim to in-source group processes and critical technical knowledge.”
Milan Kumar, Head for IT Development center in India said, “The problem we are facing is that a lot of knowledge has gone out to vendors and sometimes it was becoming hard for us to understand our own systems. Now, we want the knowledge of critical applications to be in-house. And security is a key focus for us. We don't want data about key Volkswagen processes to be with a vendor. Whenever we get a new vendor on board, there is gap in knowledge and there is an effort in training them. When we do this in-house, it will reduce the time and also we can be creative and innovate on our processes because we have an understanding of our business - say reducing the time to get material to the factory.” Apart from 9000 IT Professional globally working for the group, the fresh lot of 1000 will be added from India.
