Norway’s Kongsberg to add software headcount in India

‘Staff strength to increase 50% annually in the coming years’

May 01, 2018 09:48 pm | Updated 09:56 pm IST - Bengaluru

Kongsberg Software & Services, a subsidiary of Norway-based Kongsberg Digital ASA, plans to hire more engineers at its facility in Bengaluru, said Hege Skryseth, EVP of Kongsberg and president of Kongsberg Digital.

“Currently, we have 130 employees in Bangalore,” Ms. Hege said. “With so much in business... we need more people. If you look back one year, we had almost increased the workforce strength by 50% and we will continue to do so for the years to come.”

Parent company Kongsberg Gruppen ASA is into three areas — maritime, defence and aerospace, and digital. The digital arm has developed a platform called “Kognifai,” an app store for industries and domains in which the group operates.

“It is an open ecosystem which allows... customers and partners to... take full advantage of what is happening in digitalisation across industries and also to make sure that they are able to do the transformation.”

3D model

“The other part is the digital twin. It is not only a 3D model but a solution that maps all of the various processes.

“It offers an opportunity to operate in oil and gas autonomously i.e., operate from [the] shore. We see that operators can save up to 30% on capex and more than 50% on operations,” she said.

The Bengaluru centre was involved in creating simulators and the digital twin.“The digital twin is built on same kind of control system. The control system i.e., the simulation engine is our backbone. It is our strength which is developed in Bangalore.”

“Basically, you can say that digital twin will help to generate digital 3D representation with assets that is going to last for a time period and at certain percentage level. It help to monitor performance and importantly, it is able to predict maintenance needs 10 to 12 months in advance.

The company has started to open up the Kognifi platform and about 20 start-ups has been taken on board now within a few years. Apart from concentrating on oil and gas the company is looking to digitalise the renewable energy sector, she said.

“India is obviously one of the most important markets for all the products, while oil and gas and digital is going to be our future. Another way to look at it is that our Indian office is the largest one as well as the fastest growing one.”

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