Siemens looks at setting up a hub for urban transport solutions in India

India is one of the fastest-growing market in terms of adding incremental revenue

Siemens, the German multinational conglomerate, is planning to establish a hub for mass transit and urban transport solutions in India, leveraging the country's growing rail transit market.

This move comes on the back of the company bagging one of its largest contracts in the country with Indian Railways. The contract, valued at Rs 26,000 crore (^3 billion), involves Siemens supplying and servicing electric locomotives for freight movement, marking the single largest order for Siemens Mobility in India.

“We will accelerate the component and locomotive manufacturing in India. We also have a site in India that develops a lot of railway infrastructure solutions. We want to use India as a hub for making mass transit and urban transport solutions,” said Peter Koerte, CTO and chief strategy officer, Siemens AG.

India has emerged as an important market for Siemens and contributes substantially to the company's revenue. The company employs 12,000 software developers in India, half of whom are based in Bengaluru.

Siemens has been transforming itself into a technology-focused firm rather than just a manufacturing player over the past two years. Koerte, noted that incremental revenue growth from India has been on the rise.

"India is at the eighth position in the global ranking among the 30 when it comes to market size. But if one looks at growth and the incremental revenue addition, India is the fastest-growing and is in the top three-five geographies," Koerte told Business Standard on the sidelines of Siemens India Innovation Day, being held in Mumbai.

He said the company continues to hire in India and though attrition is coming down, the access to talent remains a challenge.

Amid geopolitical disturbances, such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and the Ukraine war, Koerte believes that Siemens' global strategy of being a “glocal” player has benefited its business. "We have been in existence for 176 years now. We like to stay out of politics. More importantly, we have a multi-local strategy. We prefer to build products for the global market but localise depending on regional requirements," he said.

Last year, Siemens launched the Siemens Xcelerator programme, an open digital business platform with India being a key region in its rollout. The company recently announced that the platform now has 100 India-relevant digital use and reference cases across multiple industries such as food & beverages, data centers, commercial buildings, and power utilities.

Furthermore, Siemens has expanded its partner ecosystem for Xcelerator with players like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Koncept Engineers, Safex Technologies, and Sonicbolt Technologies.