Kerala has the Potential to Lead Automotive Technology Drive: Experts at KATS 2025

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
Kerala’s advanced tech and AI landscape can lead India’s rise in automation technology, observed experts of the domain at the Kerala Automotive Technology Summit (KATS 2025), a precursor to the February 21-22 Invest Kerala Global Summit in Kochi.

KATS 2025 organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in collaboration with Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC).

Revenue Minister K Rajan inaugurated the one-day conclave and Industries Minister P Rajeeve presided over the opening session.

“Kerala has highly skilled talent pool, centres of excellence and higher education institutions that are adaptive to futuristic technological advancements including automotive technology,” said P Rajeeve at the valedictory function.

The speakers at the meet made various suggestions to further strengthen the ecosystem such as establishment of Centre for Excellence for Automotive Technology, research facilities, automotive telematic facility, starting automotive technology and embedded systems certification courses and establishment of cyber security park in the state.

K R Jyothilal, Additional Chief Secretary, Transport & Power, Government of Kerala, KSIDC Executive Director Hari Krishnan R and Jijimon Chandran, Co-Chairman, CII KATS 2025, were present at the valedictory function.

“KATS 2025 is more than just a summit – it signals Kerala’s ambition to emerge as a global player in automotive innovation, leveraging its strong R&D ecosystem, highly skilled workforce, and rapidly expanding technology sector. For the first time, Kerala host the who’s who of the global automotive industry as thought leaders, innovators, and decision-makers from leading OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers come together to discuss the future of mobility. The plan is to conduct KATS as an annual event and making showcasing Kerala’s capabilities in automotive technology,” said Jijimon Chandran, Chairman, CII Thiruvananthapuram Zone, Co-chair, KATS 2025 and Founder & CEO, Acsia Technologies, based out of Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.

India has come a long way in automated mobility sector, noted Latha Chembrakalam, Vice President & Head – Technical Center India, Continental Automotive Components (India).

Automotive industry contributes 7.1 percentage of the total GDP of the country, 3.7 million employments have been generated from this industry and has 4.7% share in India’s total exports, she said.

Kerala’s robust IT sector world-class infrastructure, and engineering talent pool, have together the potential to contribute to automated driving, cloud services, IoT, UX applications and shared mobility, which are integral to automation technology, she said.

Product Design and development, AI/ML, digitalisation and tech design, and embedded system are the areas where Kerala can contribute, Latha Chembrakalam added.

The automotive ecosystem in the state is suitable for scaling up the potential of this sector, said Shri Franklin George, MD, dSPACE India. Excellent support from the government, highly skilled talent pool, low attrition and superior IT/ITES infrastructure are significant factors for the automation technology boom in the state, he added.

“We need to reinvent the Kerala brand and let industry leaders know the potential this state has in many advance technologies including automotive technology,” said Vinodkumar R, Partner & Head, Business Consulting, KPMG India.

Cloud Technology for Machine learning is the future, observed Madhu Ganguly, Head, Global Vertical and Strategic Accounts, India, AWS. Kerala is our focus state and the state’s startup ecosystem, techpreneurs, the academia-industry connection, also gives the state great potential to make giant strides in automotive sector, she added.