Demand for auto designers in top gear in India

The Economic Times Online

Demand for auto designers in top gear AVISHEK TOPNO

TIMES NEWS NETWORK THURSDAY, MARCH 03, 2005 01:39:42 AM

AHMEDABAD: It's not only automobile manufacturing that is stepping on the gas; auto designing and development is picking up pace too.

And with it comes the good news about growing demand for specialised automobile designers.

The auto industry in India is growing at a rate of about 10% CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) and many car and bike makers are increasingly focusing on in-house design and development.

Every local bike maker is now designing its own product. In the past few years both local and foreign car makers, including Maruti Udyog and Mahindra & Mahindra, have started investing in in-house designing and development of vehicles.

Suzuki, Maruti's parent company, has in fact said it wants to develop India as a design and development hub for cars outside Japan.

"Every year, the auto industry demands around 20 designers. But the numbers are rising," says Dr Darlie O Koshy, executive director of the National Insbreastute of Design (NID) which is planning to start an exclusive course of auto designing very soon.

Dr Koshy says companies such as Honda, Maruti, TVS Motor, etc hunt for prospects from among the students of 'product design' at NID.

"Many of our product design students are working with major automobile companies. But we think there is a need for specialised training," he says.

NID is planning to introduce a new post-graduate course in automobile designing in 2006 and hopes to churn out about 15-20 auto design experts every year.

"It has become imperative to develop styling and design capabilities in India not only as in-house R&D of companies but focused facilities for the entire sector," says Mr Pankaj Gupta, director, Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (Siam).

Automobile companies are constantly working on designs as consumers are now looking for values to meet physical and emotional needs apart from technological advances. Styling and design add that value to the product.

Moreover, in a compebreastive market like India, the value of a product becomes more important than its price.

Very few countries in the world have developed designing and styling capabilities for the automobile sector and India with its high skills in software and design may have an edge.

Says Mr Sudhir Sharma, whose company Elephant Design works closely with automobile companies like Bajaj Auto: "India, with vast technical and high quality IT manpower could leverage this as a compebreastive advantage in the international market."

There are no official estimates of the numbers of specialised automobile designers employed by the industry. The amount of money currently spent by automobile makers or a future projection is also not available.

But that the industry will require more trained auto designers can be gauged from the fact that even foreign car-makers such as General Motors are setting up in-house R&D centres with plans to provide design inputs to their local projects, says Mr Dilip Chhabria of DC Design. Chhabria's bespoke cars and prototypes have become popular across the world. He recently tied up with a UK-based company.