Its destination Bangalore for Daimler Chrysler

Daimler Chrysler may offshore operations to Bangalore
Indo-Asian News Service

German auto major Daimler Chrysler plans to offshore some of its engineering operations to its Bangalore research facility in the next three years, a senior company official said Friday.

"We are looking to see how to combine our research and development operations with our set-up in Bangalore," said Bharat Balasubramanian, vice president of the Mercedes Car Group.

"We hope to have enough areas where there is scope to combine the research and development operations of the company here. We have found that the talent in south India is very strong in computation analysis and so allied research work in these areas will be offshored to Bangalore, which will become a captive centre."

Balasubramanian was speaking to reporters here on the sidelines of the launch of the new Mercedes S-class and M-class cars.

While the company carries out a majority of its research and development activities in Germany where it employs about 9,500 people, it also has engineering facilities in Japan and the US.

The Bangalore facility currently employs about 200 people with most of the work done in simulation modelling, night vision systems and other active and passive safety systems apart from fuel cell and hybrid technology.