100 Years of Bosch in India
Published on : Friday 04-03-2022
From the first sales agency in 1922, Bosch in India now encompasses 18 manufacturing sites and 7 development and application centres, employing close to 31,500 associates.
Bosch, a leading supplier of technology and services in the areas of mobility solutions, industrial technology, consumer goods, and energy and building technology, is celebrating 100 years in India.
"Bosch India has brought together the best of German engineering and Indian entrepreneurship to develop innovative products across all segments," said Dr Stefan Hartung, chairman of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH, speaking on the occasion. "I wholeheartedly congratulate the management and associates of Bosch India on reaching this milestone without compromising on performance and consumer trust."
"Bosch's 100-year journey in India is a testament to the passion, hard work, and dedication of our associates. I sincerely thank our associates for the part they have played in this," said Mr Soumitra Bhattacharya, the managing director of Bosch Limited and president of the Bosch Group in India. "Bosch India will remain true to its roots and evolve, innovate, and spark the next wave of big-ticket products and services. We will continue to pursue this vision for a digital, sustainable, efficient, self-reliant, and future-ready India," he further added.
Bosch opened its first sales agency in Kolkata in 1922. From these beginnings, it now encompasses 18 manufacturing sites and 7 development and application centres, employing close to 31,500 associates. Its century-long journey, rooted in a legacy of excellence, has always been about moving into new business areas. Over the next five years, Bosch India will invest more than INR 1000 crore in the localisation of advanced automotive technologies, and in this way support Atmanirbhar Bharat, the vision of making India self-reliant.
Shaping mobility in India
Bosch is taking further strategic steps towards a leading position in the software-dominated future of mobility by combining its' automotive know-how, wide-ranging electronics and software expertise. In mobility hardware and software development, Bosch Global Software Technologies Pvt Ltd (BGSW) is the largest R&D centre outside Germany with 20,000+ engineers.
As a global leader in electric powertrain solutions, Bosch estimates that by 2030, every third new vehicle in India will be an EV. At the same time, depending on use case/customer strategy, the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) could also be electrified with mild and strong hybrids. The ICE remains an important part of the powertrain mix especially in commercial vehicles and off highway segments.
Bosch supports the government’s vision to reduce road accidents by over 50 per cent by 2025. Bosch's expertise in assisted and automated mobility ranges across passenger and commercial vehicle driver assistance with India-specific object identification technology, motorcycle safety and rider assistance, and braking and occupant safety (4W and 2W). Bosch India has invested INR 380 crore over the last 10 years and an additional INR 238 crore is planned over the next 5 years in the safety domain.
Going strong in all four business sectors
As an AIoT company, Bosch India is leveraging AI, IoT, automation, and digitalisation to develop smart, secure, efficient, and sustainable smart products of the future. Sales of connected power tools, household appliances, and heating systems alone have grown by 50 per cent within one year – from four million units in 2020 to more than six million in 2021 globally. With the Bosch Centre for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI), the company has established a strong unit in the field of AI that has already contributed some 300 million euros to the result.
Bosch will continue to invest heavily in India to expand its portfolio close to 7 per cent of total net sales. Backed by the biggest R&D team outside Germany – Bosch's Beyond Mobility business works to the highest international standards of manufacturing, product, and service quality to formulate indigenous, affordable, and India-specific innovations.
Bosch Rexroth continues to offer smart, innovative, and energy-efficient products and solutions with a seamless digital experience across touch points. It is at the forefront of transforming the factory of the future through IoT products, smart automation capability and connected manufacturing setup.
Bosch Automotive Aftermarket is the largest multi brand car service centre in India (expansion to 1000 locations by 2025); largest chain for unit repair (diesel and electrical service centres to grow to 2000 outlets by 2025) and has developed a state-of-the-art digital ecosystem for workshops that would give data insights on workshop operations, digitally diagnose and repair, and order spares via ecommerce.
Bosch Building Technologies in India is additionally making buildings intelligent, secure, energy efficient and future-ready while consolidating its localisation program to achieve close to 40 per cent of local content by 2030.
Mobility Marketplace
Bosch is well prepared to make a leap through a digital marketplace which aims to be the one stop shop for all mobility-related assets – Mobility Marketplace. As an innovation plus transactional platform, it focuses on improving utilisation and efficiency elements across the ecosystem. It is a neutral platform with digital assets focused on mobility solutions powered by Bosch expertise in the mobility domain. Not only does the marketplace provide significant value for buyers by offering curated and secured content, but it also enables the sellers to realize additional revenue channels through new business models. The platform aims to expand the portfolio of digital assets from APIs to data to end-to-end solutions, services and hardware covering a wide range of services in an automotive lifecycle such as road/weather data, telematics, navigation, point-of-interest services (parking, EV infra, etc.).
Mobility Cloud Platform
The evolution of a digital era comes with technical and operational challenges – from choosing the most appropriate technology stacks to adapting to ever-changing regulatory requirements. With the objective of addressing these challenges faced in digital product innovation in the mobility domain, Bosch has created the Mobility Cloud Platform (MCP) – a launchpad and ecosystem for developing, implementing and scaling IoT enabled digital products for advanced connected mobility solutions. The Mobility Cloud Platform helps our customers to focus on their core product features, optimising their lifetime product costs by up to 25 per cent and improving the time to market by up to 3 times. With complete flexibility and no lock-in, Bosch has developed the Mobility Cloud Platform to help new-age mobility startups, SMEs and corporates alike to scale their business.
Sustainable initiatives
Since 2020, the Bosch Group with its more than 400 locations worldwide has been carbon neutral. Bosch will embark on the next one hundred years in India by making a swift transition to Industry 4.0 and focusing on increasing its local capabilities. As a part of the company's future strategy, improving lives of young people and supporting the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative, Bosch wants to increase the employability of young people in India by 2030 through active partnerships with Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Government interventions.
