FDI in India

“The Indian market is developing very well. Now, we also have political stability. The growth will not only be double-digit but there will be premium business or 30,000-50,000 cars a year and Audi is investing in india,” Audi CEO Ruper Stader said on the sidelines of the Frankfurt Motor Show. BMW, VW and Skoda are also looking to step up their engagement with India, including greater focus on local inputs for development of vehicles and manufacturing. Mercedes Benz doubled its India assembly capacity to 20,000 units annually, also making India one of the first markets to make the GLA entry SUV outside of Germany. Suzuki Motor Corp too plans to make automobiles for Africa, the company’s next big bet, as well as for India at its upcoming factory in Hansalpur, near Ahmedabad. American aviation giant Boeing is in talks with Indian firms to manufacture parts of Apache helicopter, a day after it signed a contract with india for 15 Chinook heavy-lift and 22 attack choppers. 

A survey by Ernst & Young has seen India emerge as the most preferred investment destination with multinationals looking at the country as a manufacturing base. They are looking beyond traditional locations to set up shop in tier-two cities.

Ride-hailing app Uber is setting up its first engineering centre in India in Bengaluru to customize solutions for the local market. Uber India's product team will be the latest addition to its existing engineering outposts in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Sofia in Bulgaria, Aarhus in Denmark and Vilnius in Lithuania.

Uber is looking to hire software engineers and products managers in Bengaluru who will work closely with its on-ground operations teams and its product engineering team in San Francisco. Called the India growth product engineering team, it will be responsible for all product and engineering projects related to growing Uber's business here. “When Uber sets up engineering offices, our goal is to give the teams high impact projects and a considerable amount of autonomy. Currently we have engineering teams travelling to India and once this Bangalore team is established they will be aligning frequently, “Satish Shah, head of India recruitment at Uber, said. Uber employs over 4,000 people globally. Uber's latest ammo, to develop India-focused products, comes at a time when the ride-sharing battle is getting fierce with an anti-Uber coalition -Ola of India, Didi Kuaidi of China, Lyft of the US, and GrabTaxi of Malaysia -forming a global ride-sharing partnership under which their respective apps can be used in any of the countries in which the others operate.

Uber believes it's more than just an app. “Uber is dedicated to advancing transportation in India and we feel that an important part of that strategy means that we create a local engineering team that can focus 100% on India. The mandate of the team is to optimise Uber to better serve India and be able to serve more people across all of India,“ said Shah. The Travis Kalanick-founded company, valued at $62 billion, is betting big on India. Uber has already committed $1 billion worth of investments to India as it looks to expand its services in its biggest market outside the US.