Digital Transformation: „The Future of Mobility is Created Between Europe and India“

Artificial intelligence (AI) and electrification are redefining the automobile. At the same time, value chains and partnerships are changing. Therefore, this year's VDI congress ELIV is dedicating part of its focus to India as a tech location and its significance for this transformation. „Creating the Future of Mobility: India and Europe in the Next Decade“ is the title of the keynote that Kishor Patil, Co-Founder, MD & CEO of KPIT and Vice Chair of NASSCOM, will gibe in Baden-Baden. Ahead of the congress, we spoke with the innovation leader about how generative AI is transforming the entire development cycle and why a deep integration of the European and Indian ecosystems can make a major contribution to maintaining competitiveness. 

Mr. Patil, your keynote at the VDI congress ELIV revolves around the topic of „Co-Creating Mobility“. What change is necessary to enable true co-innovation?

Kishor Patil: The core shift is that we are moving from just providing engineering capacity to taking holistic ownership of a product. In a matured client relationship, Indian teams today are no longer just responsible for individual resources, but take ownership of complete platforms, validation programs, or holistic product releases. The idea behind this is to work collaboratively as a joint team between Europe and India within one continuous supply chain. Each partner brings their specific strengths to the table.
 

How can a deeply integrated India-Europe ecosystem help established OEMs improve their time-to-market and match the innovation speed of Asian, especially Chinese, competitors?

Kishor Patil: A deep partnership between Europe and India is key to matching the enormous development pace known as "China speed." The Chinese industry benefits primarily from a strong utilization of their local ecosystem and a distinct "AI-native" mindset. If we build a similarly strong ecosystem between Europe and India, it will immediately improve our delivery speed and innovation power. Furthermore, we benefit from the massive diversity in India:

• User and environment diversity:India offers the most diverse types of users, driving profiles, and road conditions, which is an excellent driver for innovation.
• "Bottom of the pyramid" innovation: This concept describes the approach of developing innovative solutions with limited means under high time and price pressure. Exactly this mindset is deeply anchored in the Indian market and drives the speed of innovation.
   

The automotive industry insists for obvious reasons on the highest safety standards and comprehensive validation before market launch, whereas the digital business is geared towards rapid execution and short market cycles. Do you see a conflict here?

Kishor Patil: No, I don't see a fundamental conflict. Both goals can be united through an intelligent platform architecture. A good system architecture primarily means:

• Pre-validated systems: A high level of reuse of pre-validated architectures significantly brings down the validation time for new models.
• AI-enabled end-to-end processes: Through automation and AI across the entire system, we can achieve the required speed without compromising strict quality norms. European companies are rightfully strict about quality norms. However, today we can achieve this level of safety much faster through better infrastructure and AI tools.
   

You mention AI as a driver of innovation. How will Generative AI change the process of how software is written, tested, and validated in the future?

Kishor Patil: Generative AI will serve as the fundamental operating system for the entire lifecycle of a vehicle in the future. The use of AI platforms will structure four key phases:

1. Architecture and development: AI forms the base right from system design and programming.
2. Validation: Automated testing and validation of software code and system integration.
3. Consumer experience (Edge Computing): Personalization and control of the consumer experience directly inside the vehicle.
4. After-sales and services: AI takes over the handling of warranty claims as well as upscaling through new features and over-the-air updates for the end customer.
    

Data is the fuel for AI. India has very complex traffic environments. How does testing algorithms in India help global OEMs ensure international safety standards?

Kishor Patil: A broad geographical diversity of data is essential to train robust AI models. The data from different parts of Europe differs fundamentally from other global markets. To capture this diversity, we need what are called "world foundation models". These foundational models aggregate worldwide data, validate it, and make it adaptable for different geographies and applications.
 

Historically, automotive software was strictly proprietary. Now we see a strong trend towards Open Source and standardized middleware. How important is Open Source for managing the complexity of future mobility?

Kishor Patil: Open-source software is an essential component for efficiently managing the rapidly growing complexity of vehicle architecture. This approach offers three crucial advantages: it promotes the reuse of code by different actors, it creates transparency, and it prevents developers from being stuck in technological dead ends. Nevertheless, these initiatives still need to mature. In particular, questions regarding long-term code maintenance and the exact business models for charging will have to evolve further in the future.
 

If the foundational software layers become open-source – how can OEMs still differentiate themselves from one another in the future?

Kishor Patil: Future differentiation will increasingly take place outside the actual vehicle. The vehicle itself will remain complex, but true innovation arises from the integration of various external applications. To master this integration reliably, a strong platform architecture with clear guardrails and standards is absolutely crucial. If the architecture is weak, it will inevitably lead to integration problems.
 

India is now the world’s third-largest automotive market. Do Indian consumers desire different digital features than European drivers, and how does this influence global platform development?

Kishor Patil: The Indian market is characterized by three major technological drivers that strongly point towards Asian market trends:

• Young demographic: The population, and therefore the car buyers, are very young and strongly demand digital features.
• Intelligent Cockpits: Indian consumers are very accustomed to fully digitalized processes and in-vehicle entertainment solutions.
• High electrification rate: The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is growing rapidly – even though there are comparatively few government incentives. In the two-wheeler segment, the Indian market is already largely electrified. For commercial and passenger vehicles, electrification is also the dominant trend due to energy costs and the availability of natural resources, although hybrids will remain an important bridge technology in rural areas for now.
   

In the automotive industry, India is considered an increasingly important and capable hub for integrated product development. What specific technical capabilities are currently growing fastest in the Indian tech sector?

Kishor Patil: Technological capabilities in India are currently developing fastest in four core areas:

1. Chip-to-cloud integration: The ability to holistically map end-to-end systems from semiconductors up to cloud infrastructure.
2. Software- and AI-defined vehicles: The development of middleware and vehicle platforms that are designed with an AI-first approach from the start.
3. System validation & digital twins: Modern testing procedures and the creation of digital twins to safely validate systems.
4. Ecosystem collaboration: Indian companies work deeply integrated with Tier 1 suppliers and OEMs, which creates an excellent understanding of holistic software development across the entire vehicle.
    

European experts often warn that traditional manufacturers are too slow in the transformation to the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV). How can the collaboration between Europe and India solve this?

Kishor Patil: By pooling our respective core competencies into what has the potential to become the second-largest automotive market in the world. Europe, and Germany in particular, has outstanding strength in product design and core research. India brings enormous end-to-end execution speed in the software sector, as well as a massive start-up and research landscape. This symbiosis has long been happening in practice: In my home city of Pune, three large German OEMs and over 300 German companies from the Tier 2 and Tier 3 sectors have already established themselves. Through this direct cross-pollination of ecosystems, we can adapt innovations to local and global systems much faster and thus remain competitive.