Q. Could you introduce us to your organisation?
A. Embitel specialises in embedded design services, cloud and mobility solutions for
automotive and automation domains.
Automotive and automation business units, bring in-depth domain knowledge to the table. and we have a horizontal function of cloud and mobility solutions which collaborate with both automotive and automation.The cloud and mobility teams are involved in designing cutting-edge and futuristic solutions. This enables us to deliver value-add services by being prepared for the next technology wave.
Q. What would be your organisation’s unique selling proposition (USP)?
A. As I mentioned earlier, at Embitel, we leverage the expertise and domain know-how of our cross-functional teams of embedded systems, cloud and mobility solutions to stay ahead of the game. This unique combination (embedded and mobility), designed by purpose, has helped us deliver cutting-edge end-to-end solutions to our global customers and partners in automotive and automation domains.
For instance, our automotive embedded team leveraged their vehicle diagnostics protocol expertise along with our cloud and mobility solutions team’s app development capability to design a remote vehicle diagnostics app.
This is in sync with how our customers are also aligning themselves.
Mark Fields’s, CEO of Ford Motor Co, statement at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 is relevant here. He said, “We are thinking of ourselves as a mobility company and not only a car and truck company.”
Thus, with this confluence of connectivity, cloud and mobility technologies in product engineering, as an embedded electronics design house, we have been delivering the best of both the worlds to our clients and partners.
Q. What are the key technologies you work on?
A. At our development centre in Bangalore, teams are working on in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, IoT solutions for smart-home automation and integration of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) modules in infotainment systems.
We have also been involved in projects for design and development of automotive electronic control units (ECUs) for seating control, electronic power steering, body electronics, power train, battery and engine management.
Our automation business unit is collaborating with clients from machine vision, metrology and industrial automation domains for board support packages or firmware development, human-machine-interface (HMI) design and development, re-engineering, and verification and validation projects.
Q. Out of these, are there any technologies that you specialise on?
A. We are one of the very few design houses in India that provide embedded software or hardware design solutions for automotive ECUs. And with respect to the current technology wave, we find ourselves innovating a great deal, with our customers and partners, in the areas of infotainment, IoT and connected car space.
There is lot of interest in these areas and we are proud to say that the innovation culture at Embitel has ensured we are equipped with required expertise and solutions for our customers during these exciting times.
Q. What geographies do you focus on? Could you also tell us about your focus areas for Indian clients?
A. India is key business geography for us from point of view of automotive and IoT home automation innovations. We have also been successfully associating with global clients from the United States of America (USA), Germany, Sweden, France & the United Kingdom (UK) that are equally significant business geographies for us.
Q. What do you believe is important to be a successful design house?
A. Establishing trust is the key factor. This is very significant for a long-term relationship.
In product engineering service (PES) engagements, we work with our customers to design products for end-users. Here, quality is critical and we have a well-defined quality model (EmbiQ). This model ensures timely quality checks, audits and active participation of customers in quality assurance (QA) process.
And, last but in no way the least, curating and grooming engineering talent and skill-sets is second to none.
Q. Tell us about advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) you are working on.
A. The ADAS have an input that activates an actuator that then prompts adjustments in ECUs to help the car take independent decisions. These could be passive ADAS that simply give out a warning or active systems that take timely actions like speed change, detecting driver drowsiness and so on.
We have partnered with Savari networks for integrating our vehicle-to-everything (V2X) module into infotainment systems, and finding solutions to their requirements is expanding our expertise in this domain.
Q. What do you think of the IoT?
A. IoT is an amalgamation of the existing connectivity technologies making communication and life easier. It is the coming together of technologies in the right order. We believe we are at the right place at the right time and are dealing with gateways, sensor networks, mobile apps, cloud technology, connected car and smart homes in the IoT paradigm.
Q. What do you think is the most striking aspect about the IoT?
A. In my opinion, that would be the security angle. With everything connected via the Internet, cyber security is the greatest challenge. ‘Internet of secure things’ as you might want to call it, is one of the most critical thing to drive and we try to take care of it at every stage.
Q. Who all have you partnered with for technologies and why?
A. We have been collaborating with our ecosystem partners actively over the years. This facilitates agility and speed in designing solutions. We are in the knowledge industry and collaboration is the key to success here. For instance, designing our infotainment system using Freescale’s i.MX 6 platform, which is an automotive grade system optimised for multimedia applications, helped us deliver a high-performing system with reduced time-to-market.
We are members of the Freescale Connect Partner Program, Microchip Design Partners Community, ARM Connected Community, Texas Instruments microcontroller unit (MCU) Developer Network Program, EnOcean Alliance (energy harvesting sensor networks for IoT solutions), Softing tools for automotive diagnostics and testing and EtherCAT Technology Group – real-time, Ethernet-based industry automation protocols.
