The scope of engineering services has expanded to a broad range of new product development, value engineering, and support functions. This changing role of engineering service providers is driving the industry's growth substantially. Unlike in the past, global service providers have been considered for more strategic roles like co-innovation and joint development projects, which are based on a risk-sharing model.

Moreover, organizations today often require a variety of specialized engineering services when developing a new product, process, or service. This includes concept development, design elements, prototyping of the product or service itself, plus the infrastructure, equipment, and processes required in their manufacture, maintenance, or delivery. Aligned to the demand for end-to-end engineering services, RLE India tapped the opportunities and established a global brand for quality engineering services.

RLE India- a subsidiary of the RLE International since 2005, acts as a competent offshore partner within the global group of companies. At the same time, RLE India stands for high-quality "best value" engineering solutions on the global manufacturer and supplier market. With Dr. Vijay Machigad's stewardship and governance, the company creates innovative and efficient solutions for its customers based on design, development, and methodological competence in the areas of body-in-white (body design), Interiors & exteriors, chassis and electronics. He is leading a high-performing troop of 400 engineers at three customer-oriented development locations in Bangalore, Chennai and Pune.

Engaging in an exclusive conversation with CEO Insights, Dr. Vijay Machigad highlights inspiring facts about RLE India's journey towards the pinnacle of success.

Brief us on your educational and professional background? How has it helped you in your journey so far?
After completing BE Mechanical from Karnataka University and PG diploma in Business Management from Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies Pune, I began my career in the manufacturing industry. Initially joined as fellowship assignee at CMTI Bangalore.

In the career spanning over 27 years, my exposure was immense with brands like Sandvik Asia, Infosys Technologies and Tech Mahindra. My experience in the manufacturing and engineering services sector has made me an all-rounder in terms of delivery, sales, management, P&L, strategy and diversification, and more. This diverse experience is helping to seamlessly lead RLE India since 2015.

Elaborate on your roles and responsibilities at RLE India. Illustrate the company's journey over the years.
As a Managing Director at RLE India, I'm responsible for global and domestic business growth, business strategy, P&L management, customer & employee satisfaction, operations, and compliance.

Over the last 16 years, RLE India emerged as a leading engineering service provider to the automotive industry globally. The company renders the Best Cost Country advantage to its customers globally and RLE as a group is trusted by customers as a Low-Risk business partner with specialties such as New product development, Vehicle Engineering, CAE Services, Automotive Electronics, Design and development, Light-weighting, Benchmarking, Interiors and Exteriors, Body-in-White, Safety, NVH and Durability, Digital Engineering, Staffing Solution, Automation, Manufacturing Engineering, Styling,

Data Management, and Release, Model-Based Design, and HIL/MIL/SIL Testing and Digital IT platform based on Java, SharePoint and similar technologies.

What benefits do you offer to customers that other companies in the market fail to deliver?
Engineering services is a broad term that includes a wide array of services. Unlike most of the companies in the domain, RLE India is capable of addressing the complete product development lifecycle, instead of just focusing on CAD/Design services. Our core is to deliver complete solutions from design, development to launch support. RLE India has adapted a flexible model to either work from clients' location or in our preferred location. With our global experience, we are able to predict the risks and uncertainties and offer fixed price services to the clients.



The parent company's global presence as OEM in Germany, USA, UK, Spain, Australia, China & India with 19 offices is helping us to work closely with customers across the globe.

We believe in long-term partnerships. One of the unique aspects of RLE India is a Consulting-led solution to cover right from mechanical design to CAE simulation to Electrical architecture to Embedded/Cloud-based software and digital IT platform solutions. Most importantly, our customers can avail German quality services at Indian cost.

RLE India is growing at a steady rate of 20-30 percent and expanding into futuristic automotive technologies to provide world-class solutions, not just services

How is your company utilizing the opportunities in the EV sector to create a distinct niche in the market?
We are keeping a close eye on the Automotive side of EV development, specifically on devices that a vehicle would need to be compatible with EV infrastructure like charging stations, battery swap stations, etc. We are working on EV-related technologies in close collaboration with our RLE Future Motiv team in the UK. We are also one of the leading service providers competent of providing light weighting solutions for body design, which is one of the most important aspects of an EV.

Kindly throw some light on the various technologies that you leverage while offering engineering services to provide efficient and timely delivery of services.
Some of the technologies leveraged are CAD tools, Virtual simulation and validation, Model-Based Design and Development for edge computing on ECUs, AI and ML-based Cloud computing to personalize driver's experience and Digital IT Platform based on Java/dotnet/SharePoint. Our R&D team has come up with an initiative for Digitalization, which deals with analysing the futuristic requirements of clients and investing in those. At present, we are inclined towards, Collaborative engineering, KBE and Automation, and Global resource planning / globally distributed program management.

Are there any upcoming innovations in your company that we are likely to witness in the coming future in the market?
At RLE India, our plans are pivoting around developing light-weighting solutions, body designing using advanced materials, and large-scale integration of new technologies like autonomous drive, EV, OTA, and others.