Professor S Sadagopan is the founder director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore. Before joining IIIT-B, he taught for more than two decades at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

He was in Chennai recently in connection with the Telematics in Transportation 2004 conference jointly organised by the CII and IIIT.B with industry bodies as partners.

He spoke with Shobha Warrier of how India can be a major player in the field telematics.

You have said that can be a prominent player in the field of telematics, just like it is in IT. But the US, Europe and Japan are ahead of us by a decade. Why do you still feel we can be a major global player?

Sometimes, latecomers can have an advantage; in IT parlance, we call it legacy-free. For instance, many countries had an enormous number of IBM mainframes.

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For whatever reason, we could never afford the IBM mainframe. That was in some sense a handicap, but it actually became an advantage because people could start using Minis, and we could connect using PCs and make them into LANs, etc. Many countries recognised this much later. But we started doing it earlier.

The computer and communications industries, over a period of time, have independently developed so much that you have commodity microprocessors, things which you can buy for dollars and not hundreds of dollars. This is to our advantage.

Countries like Germany have put in millions of dollars into development of various elements in telematics. Each one of them independently built sensors, controllers, hardware, software, and communication. Now, when they are trying to put it all together, they are finding it hard because each one is proprietary and you have hundreds of them.

They know that unless you develop shared infrastructure, it is not going to work. For example, General Motors built a huge system for tracking their cars. They built their own proprietary network over the country. Today, new entrants can use the infrastructure.

Is it possible for competitive players to share infrastructure and knowledge?

People come together when they find benefit. It is not that they have any love for their partners. They realize that by partnering they save money, time and they also have better chances of survival.

Is it because India is starting on a clean slate that it stands a chance of becoming a global player in telematics?

There are two things that are happening independently. One is that many parts of automotives are getting what is called 'electronified.' There are microprocessors and software in engine systems, transmission systems, control systems, emission detection systems, the diagnostic systems, etc.

Software is something that India has adopted well. We can write software better, faster and cheaper than anyone else in the world. The world has accepted us. Yes, this is different kind of software. So far, we have been writing business software but some of us feel writing technical software is going to be easier for us because, unlike in other countries, most of the software professionals are also engineers.

Because automotive is getting more and more hardware and software and as we are good in software, I have a strong feeling that we will do better than most people in the world.

Not many know about telematics even now. How did the Indian industry react when you started talking about it?

Two years back when we started talking about telematics, people laughed at us. They said, when you don't have roads, you don't have buses, why are you talking about telematics? We said roads and buses will come; it is a question of time. Now we have the Golden Quadrilateral, and we are getting better buses.

We feel academic institutions should give 'thought leadership' so that markets can be created. See, the government think tank does not create markets.

What we academicians can do is bring all the players together. That is why we have brought so many players under one roof here. And, we are not going to have these conferences for one year, but five.

You said India has an advantage in telematics in transportation over other countries because we have three billion-dollar software companies and a billion-dollar automotive company in India. In what way can this be advantageous?

It is like this: you need a particular level of scale before you can be a global player. Mastech got the order for Metro, London because it was a huge company. If they were a $2 million company, it would not have happened.

Precisely why I said India should show that we not only have great products and services, but that we can also grow into big companies. That is why I quoted Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services becoming billion-dollar IT companies and TVS Motors becoming a billion-dollar automotive company. With these companies in India, people know that we are long-term players.

In telematics, do you feel transportation is the area where we can grow rapidly?

The Indian IT industry has come of age. We have become a $15 billion industry, and it is said we will cross $50 billion in the next 5 years.

Some of us feel we will grow much larger. See, the banking and financial services is a big industry, and IT in banking and financial services is an area where India will make its global mark.

Flexcube, a product from i-flex, is rated as number one in the world now for the last two years, and it is running in 186 countries.

The second industry where India will shine, according to me is automotive. Third, I expect industrial automation. Fourth is, healthcare, and fifth is, education. My feeling is the next phase of growth for the Indian IT industry is any of these core areas.

What are our strong points as far as telematics in automotive is concerned?

We have great automotive companies. We have great software companies. We understand the domain and the process much better. We are accepted and we have the English language. Each one plays into the other.

In 1991, we used to produce just 30,000 cars. Now, we produce a million cars (annually). We also have an established automotive component manufacturers' industry. We exported a billion dollars worth last year. So, we have the auto OEM (original equipment manufacturer), auto component, and we have all the auto giants here.

We also have all the major IT companies present here. So, we have a very well orchestrated eco-system. This is what gives me confidence to say that we will be in a position to do very well.

We need favourable policies and interfaces by the government.

In what way can the government create such an atmosphere?

The government should play an enabling role. For example, in order to have navigation, we need maps. We have the 200-years-old Survey of India, and the defence department simply uses the word 'security' and shoots everything down.

See, through satellites, the whole world can manage and get all the information about India but there is a rule in this country that you cannot put the Survey of India maps on the Net. I think, information on India should be available to Indians.

IT is one industry that is providing jobs to thousands of engineers here. Do you expect telematics to provide as many jobs?

The IT industry globally is a trillion dollar industry, out of which we have 2 per cent of the global market. The automotive industry is about three-and-a-half trillion, and telematics constitute about 5-10 per cent. The interesting part is that 90 per cent of the new services in telecom come from telematics. That means growth is actually going to be in telematics.

So, we expect to create a million-plus jobs in the IT industry, another million plus in IT-Enabled Services and another million in telematics over the next five years.

Photo: Sreeram Selvaraj