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Sam Pitroda, chairman & CEO of the US-based World Tel, and the man behind India's telecom revolution, has exhorted India Inc to tap the country's high talent pool for making India the next hub for telematics.
Addressing the first international telematics' conference "Tele Trans 2003" from his Chicago office through a satellite link, Pitroda said on Monday the Indian government should have policy norms and a regulatory framework to enable the industry develop robust telematic solutions for the burgeoning automotive and infrastructure sectors.
"India has in it to emerge as the new destination for telematics, thanks to the abundant availability of talent pool, a cost-effective R&D base and a growing market in the country as well as abroad.
"The development of wireless technologies such as GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) and CDMA should propel the country to repeat its success in the software sector in the nascent telematics area."
"Though we have missed the bus in taking to chip manufacturing after an indigenous semi-conductor fabrication facility got burnt down in Chandigarh over a decade ago, we can still capitalise on the resource base developed to design new chips and embedded software for enhancing their processing speed and multiply their applications," Pitroda stated.
Though the Indian automotive and infrastructure sectors have been growing at a rapid pace in the post-liberalisation and globalisation era, the application of telematics solutions in improving the quality of their products or efficient operations is still a far cry.
"The government should soon enact a legislation that will make the transportation and other infrastructure areas such as power, railways, ports, and highways to enforce telematics in their products and services for eliminating wastage, inefficiency and delays in delivery schedules," Pitroda stressed.
"If India Inc can't afford to set up a multi-billion dollar facility in the absence of a robust hardware base and lower volumes, it should take to chip and ASIC designing, embedded software, VLSI, and multiple application development for the global semi-conductor and telematics industry by leveraging on its strong resources base," Pitroda declared.
Referring to the high levels of losses incurred by the Indian Railways and the power sector due to the non-application of telematics, Pitroda lamented that the India's transportation and service sectors were yet to wake up for the need to use telematic solutions to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
"The Indian Railways generates around 72 per cent of its revenues from its freight service, but does not make enough money to post profits as the utilisation rate of its fleet of wagons is not optimal.
"By using wireless technology and telematics solutions, it can not only keep a track of its thousands of wagons, but also utilise them efficiently to improve the margins.
"Similarly, power corporations can reduce their transmission and distribution losses, hovering between 30-40 per cent across the country, by using telematics and make-up for the shortages in energy generation, which is India's bane," Pitroda affirmed.
On the road transportation sector, S Sadagopan director of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore told rediff.com that the government had a major role in ensuring that the automotive industry take to telematics as seriously as it did in the case of implementing the environmental laws, including the emission norms.
"If India has to emerge as a telematics hub this decade, the government has a role to enforce safety norms in the automobiles as well as on the roads. It should enact such laws as it did in the case of pollution norms so that the automobile manufacturers deploy telematic solutions in their products not only as value addition, but also to improve the safety aspect," Sadagopan disclosed.
The IT industry should cash in on the potential of telematics as the niche sector has been making inroads with new products and solutions.
"Moving up the value chain from services and body-shopping, the Indian IT companies should take to product development in telematics so that it can repeat the outsourcing successes witnessed in the software segment," Sadagopan added.
Though the Indian automobile industry is yet to have a critical production mass for implementing telematics in their products, it can develop the domain expertise in collaboration with the IT sector for tapping the global export market, which runs into billions of dollars.
About 200 delegates from Indian and abroad are -participating in the two-day conference, organized by the CII Institute of Quality, in association with the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers, and the Automotive Component Manufacture Association of India.