India will take huge leap over China because of its software development st

How significant is this visit to India?

There are primarily three objectives of this visit to India. We recently had the global launch of our next generation scalable infotainment system, in Shanghai, which is also the most advanced infotainment system in the world. We are doing the same in Delhi. Secondly, we are officially launching our presence in India. Last year, we announced our collaboration with Wipro in Bangalore. Today, we have our India head office and our R&D centre in Bangalore. This R&D centre works both for Wipro and our own requirements.

The third objective is to launch the entire Harman International brand in India. We are a well kept secret in India. We have been present in India for many years and have been the official partners of events like Filmfare awards and Miss India and Miss Universe pageants. We have also got major contracts for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi next year.

In the automotive space, all European cars coming into India are coming in with our systems. They may not have Indian navigation because that did not exist in India, but had everything else people wanted, including telephony, software backbone for car controls or even options for our audio systems.

China and India are two of the most developing countries and we are investing in these countries as we expect greater growth in the future through the European carmakers as well as ambitious local carmakers who would like to offer our systems in their cars.

What is your larger strategy for the Indian market, considering it’s predominantly a small car and low-end market?

Our global strategy is to continue to be suppliers of high-technology, premier solutions for automotive and professionals. That is a strategy we are not changing. The launch of the scalable infotainment system will allow us to penetrate couple of layers below the premium offerings. It will reach out to the mid-sector cars, but will not reach the lowest level of cars. That is not what we intend to do.
Our objective is to offer products that carmakers like BMW, Mercedes and Audi can offer in their mid-sector cars, and the same system gets acceptance in the high and mid-sector cars from Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki, etc. The same holds true for our professionals business. We do Grammy’s, Oscars and have done Beijing Olympics.

So, going to the low-end is not our strategy.

What are the various challenges that a market like India offers for Harman International, considering its preference for smaller, cost-efficient solutions?

The Indian market is different, but the fundamentals are not very different. We’ll see how things change in India in the coming years, but the luxury sector is picking up. India is a 1.2 million car market, and I’m told about 25 percent of that comprise of mid and high-end cars. That is where we’ll operate.
The other 70-odd percentage can not afford any kind of infotainment system. There we
don’t have a solution today, but will work with the market and automotive suppliers.

For a market that is so price conscious, how do you make your product cost-effective?

There has been a fundamental change in our strategy. Up until now, we used to make
custom solutions for BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche, among others. This infotainment system is software driven and has two million lines of codes. This gives automakers the flexibility of turning on and turning off the features. They can price it based on what they want to sell. The same