Interview with Sanjay Ravi, MD, High Tech Industry, Microsoft

ZW: Could you tell us a little bit about the concept?

Sanjay: Most of the people who drive cars have now developed a need to stay connected even while on the move. Whether it is the navigation system, or being connected through their cell phones and a number of other devices which are used by everyone around the globe to stay connected, for work or leisure. And that a number of automotive manufacturers wanting to bring in these features, which has been a great success with some of the models, and vehicle adoption for this kind of technology has now accelerated, both in developed and developing markets.

ZW: India is a developing market and in focus right now. So, are you also planning to supply to the aftermarket eventually?

Sanjay: What Microsoft does is that we provide a mobile connectivity to the kind of services you want for vehicles. And that capability is available for automotive OEMs as well. And as this evolves and these capabilities coming , the technology would be available in OEMs and aftermarket. In fact, the aftermarket is already a sizeable chunk of the automotive industry.

ZW: A number of cars do not come with the mobile connectivity and there is no variant of the manufacturer that comes with the same capability. So, are you looking at retrofitting such cars with your setups or through people who have the technology to do so?

Sanjay: There is no mandate on the Microsoft platform that it cannot be used by aftermarket manufacturers. It  really depends on the market behavior and the kind of inspiration that is required by customers who need it however, do not want to go in for a model that high. It also has to be done in a safe way. For instance, what Microsoft has been using with Ford SYNC is that the solution are done in such a way that what we call a natural part of the car, it is being built and put in the car and make people more comfortable to the software when they drive the car. We feel that OEMs have the capability to create a market like this while making a car as well as the equipment, safe.

ZW: What are your future plans when it comes to a country like India? And what is the trend in growth of such technology globally and in India?

Sanjay: If you look at the global market today, the introduction of new vehicles with connected technology is about 20 percent. By 2015, our assumption is that it would grow to 90 percent. So, there is a very big accelerated growth that is happening with the environment. If you look into the global consumer subscriber base, that has grown on an yearly basis to 50 million subscribers today to about 200 million subscribers by 2015. So, there is a considerable number of people who want to subscribe to such a technology.

Now, when you compare it to a developing market, there are certain drivers that bring this technology to the market in an accelerated pattern. So if you look at the Brazil, there is a government regulation around stolen vehicles. A new vehicle in Brazil needs to come with a technology that allows vehicles to be tracked in a stolen vehicle situation. Some of those things help from a regulation perspective to drive this technology. The other driver is the consumer who has the willingness to get the technology. So, emerging markets, we do see that coming in and in India also we see that coming in with the large consumer base and the IT savvy-ness of the consumer base as well.

ZW: Are there any particular marketing strategies that you do in case of emerging markets like India.

Sanjay: There are three basis of this technology that drives the whole seamless connectivity in a market. Starting off with the in-vehicle platform, and this is a platform that customer like. The second platform is the cloud computing platform. It provides you a lot of benefits and needs a lot of IT investments to add more consumer features and with some people, the investment does accelerate the adoption of this new technology.

So cloud computing, manufactured with new technology leads to new innovations in the market and becomes a major part in bringing a new technology in the market. And this is one of the reasons why, say, Toyota, did their global announcement with Microsoft where they announced that they will use the Azure platform as their global platform for mobile connectivity so that the platform will provide them the capability that they would need to bring these services to bring to a number of countries.

The third part of the technology is the consumer services, which are also a major contributor to the growth of this technology. So, from a technology and a platform perspective, we see these three elements driving the growth of mobile connectivity, the adoption and the capability of this market. As from our part of the marketing strategy, we make sure that our technology is scalable and available in that particular market and the cloud enables features make the technology even more attractive.