<div><em>Engineering centres push their teams to build smart platforms. Over 300 patents were filed last year alone, writes<strong> Vishal Krishna</strong></em><br><br><br>In the narrow housing colonies of Indranagar, a suburb in Bangalore, a startup called Ather Energy has filed a patent for its battery design and battery management system. When the product is out, on a two wheeler, it will be the most powerful battery because of the software's ability to manage the discharge intelligently. Over 300 patents were filed in 2014, from Bangalore-based engineering companies that combined software and hardware services. This is one of several such stories. This adds to the whole 'Make in India' spin. At least India's software skills have upgraded to a whole new level.</div><div> </div><div>Ather Energy, which has a zero revenue base, was funded purely on the product development skills of engineer founders, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, by Tiger Global's Lee Fixel. The company has raised Rs 76 crore.</div><div> </div><div>Now look at this way; there are 1.7 million Mercedes cars sold globally and all of them has a piece of software written by Indians. Mind you these are not mundane software testing programmes but rather entire modules of safety and structural integrity made in India.</div><div> </div><div>The smart city and internet of things (IoT) revolution globally is driving Indian companies to innovate on a large scale. Philips Innovation Centre, Robert Bosch, Continental and Mercedes Benz Research and Development Centre India (MBRDI) are upping the ante in making engineers innovate from a grounds up perspective and to solve real life solutions. </div><div> </div><div>Take Robert Bosch Engineering India Limited, it has filed 79 patents in 2014 and in 2013 it filed 180. If you go in to their building there are global and Indian cars. Cars like the Cadillac XTS have their entire telematics software being made in India. Robert Bosch believes sensors and cameras will eventually become the main stays of a smart city which will use cloud services and video analytics on a pay as you go business model. "We are pushing our engineers to innovate for a smarter age. A lot of the products will eventually find their way to applications within India," says Vijay Ratnaparkhe, MD of Robert Bosch Engineering India. He says that his centre is also creating software for the entire car to infrastructure, car to car and connected home concepts. "We are looking at quality in patents," says Ratnaparkhe.</div><div> </div><div>Around 2300 engineers sit out of the MBRDI facility in Bangalore. These are engineers who are building the future of transportation globally. MBRDI has filed over 116 patents last year. "Our engineers are modelling cars on high end tools. They have a high understanding of system level processes," says Manu Saale, MD of MBRDI. He says that for his parent company, Daimler, India had become of strategic importance to build smart cars by 2020. "Patent filing will go up in the coming years. It's no longer about just coding," he adds.</div><div> </div><div>Even the software on the new BMW i8, the hybrid car, it's battery and engine management system carries software components built by the Continental Corporation in India. This company too files more than 50 patents a year.</div><div> </div><div>If the automobile industry has taken the leap, the health industry is not far behind. They too file several patents.</div><div> </div><div>Philips and GE Health alone file more than 40 patents per year. Unfortunately they would not disclose the exact numbers filed out of India. The Philips Innovation Centre is bringing health on to the mobile. "You need to understand in a connected world data becomes important," says Ben Hallam, Global R&D head of Philips Healthcare. He adds that the amount of analytics one can do to cut down on waiting time, staff balancing and augmentation is the first step to making healthcare accountable. If this real time flow of data happens the power is going to be with the patient and pricing treatment economically becomes imperative. All this thanks to the innovations coming out of these innovation centres. Organisations are leveraging cloud computing, data visualization and will accessbig data to enable patients to consume information that was not available to them earlier. Last thing that they (hospitals) have to do is in collaboration with entities like insurance companies, employers potentially. Today there are several pilots running to connect machine data and consumer data to sell services; but none of them have gone commercial yet in India. At least filing patents has gone up. This is just the beginning of a larger turnaround story for the Indian engineering talent story.</div>
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