The Bajaj Renault Nissan JV to make the $2,500 car is going to open up opportunities for French technology providers to get into the Indian market. Cetim – Centre Technique des Industries Mecaniques of France is among them. It hopes to come to India and also facilitate tie-ups up between Indian and French companies.
Cetim is in an advanced stage of talks with the Auto Cluster Development and Research Institute (ACDRIL) in Pune to get into a tie-up for bringing the Cetim expertise to the automotive industry in India.
Claude Barile, business development executive, directorate for regional and international development said the core business of Cetim, headquartered in Paris, was R&D and it supported the French industry in the mechanical engineering area. “Cetim decided to externalise its competence and develop this department to take it international,” Barile said.
The first such Cetim centre came up in Morocco at Casablanca and this was dedicated to fatigue and material testing for aeronautics and wind turbines. Another centre is in Tunisia. In Thailand, along with the FIM and MHP trade association dealing with high precision mechanical engineering and funded by the external commerce ministry, it is setting up an approved metrologics laboratory. Now India is on their radar.
In India, Cetim hopes to finalise the deal with the Auto Cluster and it could be in the area of polymers and automotive testing and be an interface between research and industry. They hope to organise partnerships between Indian and French companies, Barile said. French industry is becoming aware of opportunities in India and looks at India as a destination with high level of competence and skill, he said. For many companies who want to come to India the first step is to find good partners, he adds. Cetim has 7,800 subscribing members from across the industry and a network of 50 labs with competence in diverse areas of engineering development.
BM Rao, MD, Auto Cluster, said they would partner with the Cetim, especially in the area of testing. This kind of a tie-up would give the facilities credibility with Cetim behind it. “We are in the process of tying up and have had meetings with Cetim,” Rao said.
Cetim has centres dedicated to polymers, composites, failure testing, nondestructive analysis, and metrology-calibration that the Cluster thinks would be useful.