Imagine an alarm going off in your car when you fall asleep while driving or your vehicle skidding on a rain-soaked road. Or, for that matter, cameras helping you keep tabs on the movement of other vehicles on a screen. Straight out of a James Bond flick? Not quite.

All these gadgets and more would be rolled out by mid-sized firm, KPIT Cummins Infosystems, which will get these sofware patented and market them by the year end.

The company is a niche partner in the automotive, semiconductor and financial and analysis (F&A) BPO market with about 38% of its revenues coming from the automotive line of business.

At a time when most large Indian IT companies are looking at outsourcing, KPIT is beefing up its intellectual property. KPIT has been aggressively looking at developing embedded systems for the automobile industry.

The company has invested about $10 million in the last one year to develop software for connectivity in automobile through vision and lane management systems.

SB Ravi Pandit, chairman & group CEO, KPIT Cummins Infosystems, said, ?We are in the process of filing patent for these software products and by the year-end, we will market the software not just as a product but as a whole service to original equipment manufacturers (OEM) like Ford, Tata and other major auto industry players.?

KPIT has 13 automotive OEMs and 30 tier-one and tier-two automotive industry vendors among its customers.

The company?s financial results for the year ended March 2008 are due soon. ?We had given a guidance of $145 million this year and we have been growing at a CAGR of 50%, so you can expect the same in the years to come. We are targeting $300 million by 2010,? Pandit added.

KPIT, along with SAP, is also setting up a centre of excellence in Pune to develop customised solutions for the automotive industry. Lloyd Adams, VP, SME regional marketing, SAP APAC Japan, said, ?Companies like KPIT are looking at a growth model where they want to bring in not just products but complete solutions for clients and SAP will bring them a platform to service their automotive clients.?