IT firms poach design talent from OEMs

Small and medium-sized IT firms are increasingly getting into the automotive design business. They are poaching employees from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to tide over the manpower crunch.

Design jobs are normally done by mechanical engineers. According to Nasscom, of the almost 200,000 mechanical engineers passing out annually, less than 25 per cent are employable. Also, only 20-40 per cent remain in this field and around 80 per cent shift to software and IT services.

IT companies have thus started resorting to poaching employees from OEMs and automobile manufacturers. Attractive compensation, overseas travel, multiple customer engagement, diversified engineering activities and creative and open work culture lures employees to IT firms.

Vikas Khanvelkar, MD, Designtech Systems Ltd (a leading CAD and CAM solutions providers), says: “The poaching is a matter of concern to all auto OEMs and component manufacturers.”

Harish Sheth, CMD, Setco Automotive, says: “Design engineering does not only relate to drawing a product using the latest software packages. Behind the product development lie key challenges that use experience. These challenges are benchmarking, value analysis/value engineering, productionisation, environment impact. A significant amount of training, organising and mentoring is required to harness this existing talent.”

Losing a design engineer costs OEMs at least two years of training and more than Rs 200,000. Attrition across OEMs is 15-25 per cent.

The talent crunch is likely to get worse. Suman Bose, country director, Dassault Systems, India, says: “The auto sector is growing in all possible sub-segments and therefore this gap is going to widen more. Unless fresh engineers with specialised skills enter the industry, there would always be exchange of employees.”

Dataram Mishra, MD and CEO, CADES Digitech Private Ltd , says: “There are not many automotive degree courses in the country. Most automotive design engineers are from mechanical engineering background. A specialised course can produce better informed/exposed design engineers.”

Satish, head of operations, Axcend, concurs that the shortage is quite severe. Engineering services being a reasonably new service arena, Indian IT firms face acute shortage of professionals. The industry currently requires at least 15,000 design engineers in the automotive domain and the demand is expected to grow at least 40-50 per cent year-on-year.