Stellantis to hire 1,100 software engineers in 12-18 months in India: PTI

Global automotive major Stellantis plans to hire around 1,100 software engineers in the next 12 to 18 months in India, which has been made the global competence centre for the development of new-age cockpit, company Chief Software Officer Yves Bonnefont said on Thursday.

The company's 50:50 joint venture with Taiwan's Foxconn, MobileDrive, for the development of cockpit software, has also set up a new office in Bengaluru and aims to hire around 100 software engineers by the end of 2023, to leverage on local talent and cater not only to Stellantis but potentially to other car makers globally, PTI reported. 

India was chosen due to its talent pool, potential market, and the speed and agility of its teams. 

As part of its global software strategy, Stellantis has embarked "on a big transformation journey" building its technology platforms of the future to be released to the market stating next year at the end of 2024, Bonnefont told PTI in an interview.

These include a completely new software and electronic architecture of the vehicle, STLA Brain; a new AI-based cockpit solution called STLA SmartCockpit; and autonomous driving solution delivering L3 capability STLA AutoDrive.

"We have decided, out of those three platforms, to make India our core global competence center for developing the cockpit. We have been actually ramping up our capabilities here in India pretty quickly," he said.

Bonnefont further said, "We now exceed 1,100 people working here in India to deliver our software strategy across the three platforms. We are going to keep investing and growing that team in order to double it basically within the next 12 to 18 months."
The doubling of the software development workforce, he said "covers the Bangalore location, Hyderabad location and we're also going to expand in Pune, where Stellantis has a traditional engineering center"
"We're going to add a software location in Pune, which will give us a third major software (development centre) in India," he added.

In order to accommodate the new hiring, Bonnefont said Stellantis is considering enhancing the capacity at its centre in Bengaluru, where the company has also opened an audio lab 'which in our view is one of the best audio lab in the industry worldwide".

When asked why India was chosen as the core global competence center for developing the new-age cockpit, Bonnefont said, "It is actually a mix of the talent and the potential of the market...

"India is a very attractive fast growing automotive market and on top of it, we believe that there is in India some appetite for high tech capabilities in vehicles, especially in relation to connected services, with onboard services in the cockpit," he said. 

Another reason, he said, is "the speed and agility of the Indian teams. I think people I meet here are incredible entrepreneurs with very very agile and fast mindsets and they are capable of executing tremendous projects in a very short period of time."

Stellantis, which was formed by the merger between Italian-American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and French PSA Group, currently sells its Jeep and Citroen brands in India.