Increasingly, Indian automotive OEM programs are deploying highly sophisticated vehicle platforms, but today’s installed commercial vehicle base reflects decades of legacy electronic architectures, technologies and supplier ecosystems. Shrinath Acharya, Co-founder & CEO, Excelfore explains to Rajneesh De, Group Editor, APAC Media & CXO Media in an exclusive conversation that the biggest challenge is not going to be any single sensor or ADAS function but integration across a very diverse Indian commercial vehicle ecosystem.
India’s phased ADAS mandate represents one of the biggest regulatory changes for commercial vehicles in recent years. How significant is this move for India’s automotive industry, and what changes do you expect OEMs to prioritize over the next three to five years?
I see this as a significant step in India’s transition from passive vehicle safety towards active and preventive safety. For a country like India, where commercial vehicles are central to freight and public transportation, technologies such as autonomous emergency braking, lane-departure warning and driver-drowsiness monitoring can have a meaningful impact on road safety.
But the larger significance of the mandate goes beyond adding individual ADAS features. It will accelerate India’s transition towards software-defined vehicles. Over the next three to five years, OEMs will increasingly have to think about the electronic and software architecture required to support these systems reliably throughout the vehicle lifecycle.
Increasing ADAS functionality will require more sophisticated software running on more powerful processor chips, greater memory and more capable sensors. As the number of sensors and the amount of data increase, in-vehicle networks will also need significantly greater bandwidth.
This means OEMs will have to prioritize sensor integration, higher-performance computing, faster in-vehicle networking, cybersecurity and connectivity, as well as the ability to update and improve software after the vehicle has left the factory.
India also has an opportunity to leapfrog some of the legacy architectures seen in mature markets. Rather than simply replicating older vehicle architectures, Indian manufacturers can increasingly design commercial vehicles around more centralized, connected and software-oriented platforms.
From our experience, one of the most important capabilities will be full-vehicle OTA. ADAS software will continue to develop and mature for years, and OEMs that build OTA capability into the vehicle from the beginning will be better positioned to address shortcomings identified after launch and keep pace with increasingly sophisticated ADAS algorithms.
At the same time, in-vehicle networks will move towards higher-bandwidth technologies such as automotive Ethernet, increasingly supported by Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) to ensure that the latency and timing requirements of safety-critical ADAS functions are met.
The mandate, therefore, is not simply pushing manufacturers to add safety features. It is accelerating a much broader architectural change in India’s automotive industry.
Many of the mandated ADAS features depend not only on sensors but also on software, connectivity, and continuous system updates. How does this change the way commercial vehicles will be designed, deployed, and maintained?
Traditionally, much of a commercial vehicle’s software was effectively fixed at the point of production, with maintenance largely centred around mechanical components and periodic servicing. The emphasis on software that comes from ADAS changes that equation. OEMs will need to continuously monitor software performance, identify issues, validate improvements and, where appropriate, deploy updates throughout the vehicle’s lifecycle.
This is particularly important in India because commercial vehicles operate in an exceptionally diverse environment. A truck travelling on a controlled highway, a bus operating in a congested city and a commercial vehicle travelling through rural or semi-urban roads can encounter very different road conditions, traffic patterns, weather and infrastructure. ADAS systems therefore have to perform reliably across a much wider range of real-world conditions.
India’s large and highly utilized commercial vehicle fleet also makes data an increasingly important part of vehicle development and maintenance. Information from vehicles can help OEMs understand how systems are performing in the field, identify recurring issues and improve algorithms and software based on actual operating conditions. Over time, this can also support predictive maintenance and reduce unplanned downtime.
We therefore need to think of the connected vehicle as part of a continuous loop: data from the vehicle (possibly utilizing Edge AI), analysis in the cloud, software improvement, validation and secure deployment back to the vehicle — followed by more data gathering to see how well the updated software is performing. The loop is continuous.
There is also an important India-specific consideration: OEMs will not move from legacy architectures to fully software-defined vehicles overnight. For many years, manufacturers will have to manage a mix of older electronic architectures alongside newer centralized and zonal platforms. The software infrastructure therefore needs to be interoperable and capable of supporting different generations of vehicles and electronic systems.
Connectivity consequently becomes part of the vehicle architecture itself. It needs to support not only OTA software updates, but also diagnostics, vehicle-health monitoring and secure data exchange.
For commercial vehicles, which are revenue-generating assets, the ability to perform these functions remotely can significantly reduce service center visits and vehicle downtime.
These technologies are already being adopted across different vehicle categories. What changes with the Indian ADAS mandate is the urgency. For commercial-vehicle OEMs, it is increasingly a question not of whether these capabilities will be required, but how quickly they can deploy them in a reliable and scalable manner.
As commercial vehicles become increasingly software-defined, what role will technologies such as over-the-air (OTA) software updates, secure data management and centralized vehicle architectures play in ensuring regulatory compliance and vehicle safety?
OTA will become an increasingly important tool for maintaining software-defined commercial vehicles in India, but OTA itself is not the objective. The objective is to keep vehicles safe, secure and compliant throughout their operating life.
This is especially important in India, where commercial vehicles have high utilization rates, operate for many years and travel across widely varying environments. Requiring large numbers of trucks or buses to return to service centers for software updates or safety-related fixes can be costly for both fleet operators and OEMs.
OTA allows many of these issues to be addressed remotely. An OEM that identifies a software problem or an improvement to an ADAS function should be able to validate and deploy updated software in a controlled manner without bringing every vehicle into a service center.
Secure OTA, however, involves much more than transferring software over a cellular network. OEMs need authentication, software integrity checks, encryption, controlled deployment, monitoring, rollback and recovery. They also need visibility into the software and firmware running on each vehicle to ensure that approved and compliant versions are in use.
India’s variable connectivity must also be considered. OTA systems need to tolerate interrupted networks, resume updates safely and avoid leaving vehicles in an inconsistent software state.
Centralized and zonal architectures will simplify this environment over time, but legacy and newer architectures will coexist for many years. Interoperability is therefore critical. OEMs need infrastructure that connects the cloud, vehicle gateways and diverse electronic systems across multiple vehicle generations without requiring a separate technology stack for each platform.
Standards-based initiatives such as the eSync Alliance can help by defining common interfaces for secure cloud-to-vehicle software updates and data exchange across suppliers and architectures.
For India, standards-based OTA, secure data management and centralized architectures are therefore becoming part of the long-term safety, compliance and lifecycle-management infrastructure of the commercial vehicle.
What are the key pillars of your GTM strategy and what are the initiatives supporting this strategy?
Excelfore operates primarily through software licensing and Software-as-a-Service tied to vehicle deployment and production scale.
Our go-to-market strategy combines direct engagement with global OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers with partnerships across semiconductor, operating-system, cloud, and engineering ecosystems, allowing its technologies to be designed into vehicle platforms early in the development cycle.
Excelfore’s principal differentiation is the speed of implementation and the scalability of its standards-based (eSync Alliance), production-proven connectivity software spanning both the in-vehicle and cloud-to-vehicle domains.
Total cost of ownership is significantly reduced through the ease of integration and high reusability of Excelfore technology, enabling rapid deployment across multiple vehicle models and product families, even in heterogeneous vehicle architectures.
India’s commercial vehicle industry includes manufacturers at different stages of digital maturity. What are the biggest technical and operational challenges OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers are likely to face while implementing these new ADAS requirements?
The biggest challenge is not going to be any single sensor or ADAS function. It will be integration — and doing that integration across a very diverse Indian commercial vehicle ecosystem.
Increasingly, Indian OEM programs are deploying highly sophisticated vehicle platforms, but today’s installed base also reflects decades of legacy electronic architectures, technologies and supplier ecosystems. OEMs cannot economically abandon these legacy solutions and move to a clean-slate architecture in a single vehicle generation. Instead, they must introduce cameras, radar, new ECUs and higher-performance computing while continuing to support established platforms. For many OEMs, the transition to centralized, software-defined architectures and entirely new electronic systems will therefore take place gradually over many years.
Cost is another important consideration. Commercial vehicles in India operate in a highly price-sensitive market, and the economics of adding ADAS cannot be viewed in the same way as in the premium passenger-car segment.
Manufacturers will need to achieve the required levels of safety and reliability while keeping the technology affordable for fleet operators. It is important that cost-sensitivities are well understood and explained. While the initial cost would be a bit high due to enhanced electronics, the ongoing maintenance, and social benefits of preventing accidents would outweigh that. In the long run, the TCO (total cost of ownership) for the commercial fleet operators would be far lower than current deployments.
Then there is India’s operating environment. A commercial vehicle can move between a metropolitan city, a national highway and a rural road within the same journey. Dust, rain, heat, poor lane markings, mixed traffic and unpredictable road behaviour can all affect how ADAS sensors and software perform. Systems therefore need extensive validation under Indian conditions rather than simply being adapted from technologies developed for more structured road environments.
There is also a significant software-integration challenge. ADAS functions increasingly depend on several systems working together — sensors, ECUs, vehicle networks, connectivity and software. OEMs will have to manage software supplied by multiple Tier-1s and technology companies while ensuring that a change or update to one component does not adversely affect another.
Cybersecurity becomes another critical layer. Connecting a vehicle and software to the cloud for remote updates adds a new attack surface. OEMs will need to ensure that only authenticated and validated software reaches safety-critical systems.
Operationally, uptime is perhaps the most important Indian consideration. A truck or bus is a working asset, and taking it out of service for diagnostics, recalls or software maintenance has a direct financial impact on the fleet operator. This makes remote diagnostics, secure OTA updates and predictive maintenance particularly valuable.
Finally, since manufacturers cannot realistically replace their entire technology stack every time vehicle architecture evolves, it is important that Indian OEMs create connected platforms where legacy, transitional and software-defined architectures can operate side by side.
The real challenge is therefore to make this transition without disrupting the economics and operational realities of the commercial vehicle market. The companies that can combine safety, cybersecurity, software capability and interoperability with affordability and reliability will be best positioned for India’s next phase of automotive evolution.
Beyond regulatory compliance, do you see the ADAS mandate creating new business opportunities for automotive software companies, technology suppliers and the broader connected mobility ecosystem? Where is India best positioned to build long-term competitive advantage?
Absolutely. I see the mandate as a catalyst for a much larger transformation of India’s automotive industry, rather than simply a compliance requirement.
India has an opportunity to build an automotive software ecosystem around its own requirements and operating conditions, with an eye on global requirements. This could span embedded software, automotive cybersecurity, cloud platforms, vehicle data management, remote diagnostics, OTA infrastructure, AI and analytics. Importantly, this ecosystem does not have to be built entirely around imported technology. India’s large engineering and software talent pool gives local companies an opportunity to develop and integrate much of this capability here.
The scale of India’s commercial vehicle market is another major advantage. Trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles spend a very large amount of time on the road and operate across some of the most diverse driving environments in the world. That creates an enormous real-world test bed for developing and improving automotive software.
Indian conditions are also very different from those in many developed markets. We have mixed traffic, two-wheelers and pedestrians sharing roads with trucks and buses, inconsistent lane markings, congested urban roads, rapidly expanding expressways and significant variations in road quality. Weather conditions can range from extreme heat to heavy monsoon rain.
ADAS systems developed for highly structured road environments cannot simply be transplanted into India and expected to perform optimally. This creates an opportunity for Indian engineers and technology companies to develop software that understands Indian driving behaviour and Indian road conditions. That knowledge could eventually have applications in other emerging markets with similarly complex traffic and infrastructure.
There is also an economic opportunity. Commercial vehicles are working assets, and fleet operators are highly sensitive to vehicle utilization, maintenance costs and downtime. Technologies such as remote diagnostics, predictive maintenance, OTA updates and data-driven fleet management can therefore create value well beyond the original safety mandate.
I also see an opportunity for India to build the software and electronics capabilities around the vehicle, not just manufacture the vehicle itself. With the country’s growing semiconductor, electronics and automotive-component ecosystem, there is an opportunity to create a deeper technology stack — from chips and sensors to embedded software, connectivity, cloud infrastructure and AI.
For companies like Excelfore, this is where the opportunity becomes particularly interesting. The requirement is not simply to connect a vehicle to the cloud, but to create the secure software infrastructure that allows an OEM to manage, monitor, update and continuously improve vehicles throughout their lifecycle.
These are true inflection points for local tech in India. Now is an opportunity to address local requirements with “Made in India” and thereafter be competitive in global markets too.If India can combine its automotive manufacturing scale with its software and engineering capabilities, the long-term opportunity is much bigger than meeting a domestic ADAS regulation.
Indian OEMs can use these technologies to expand commercial-vehicle exports worldwide—particularly into developing markets with operating conditions similar to India, but increasingly also into developed markets where advanced safety, cybersecurity, software lifecycle management and connected-vehicle capabilities are becoming basic competitive requirements. At the same time, India can emerge as a developer and exporter of the automotive software and connected-vehicle technologies that enable those vehicles.
How do standardization bodies like the eSync Alliance work during this phase to bring technology together?
Standardization becomes particularly important for India because we are entering the software-defined vehicle era from a divergent starting point. We have established OEMs with decades of vehicle platforms and supplier relationships, newer vehicle programmes adopting centralized computing and connected architectures, and a very large installed base of commercial vehicles that will remain on the road for many years.
As ADAS, connectivity and OTA become more widespread, an OEM may have sensors and ECUs from several Tier-1 suppliers, processors from different semiconductor companies, software from multiple technology providers and cloud infrastructure from different providers. If each layer uses a proprietary approach to software updates and data communication, the complexity — and ultimately the cost — increases significantly.
This is where industry-wide standardization has an important role to play. An initiative such as the eSync Alliance provides a common framework that allows different parts of the vehicle and cloud ecosystem to communicate and work together.
Instead of an OEM having to develop a separate mechanism for every combination of cloud platform, vehicle architecture, ECU and software supplier, standardized interfaces can provide a common way of moving software and data between these layers.
That has particular relevance for India because we are not going to replace our existing vehicle architectures overnight. Manufacturers will have different generations of platforms operating simultaneously. Even within the same OEM, there will be legacy vehicles, transitional architectures and newer centralized or zonal platforms.
Standardization therefore provides a way of modernizing progressively. An OEM can introduce new technologies while continuing to support vehicles already in production, rather than having to create a completely new technology stack every time the architecture changes. Standardization would be a game changer for India.
There is also a strong economic argument for this in India. Commercial vehicles are highly cost-sensitive and operate for long periods. If every OEM, Tier-1 and technology supplier has to solve the same connectivity, data and software-update problems independently, it adds cost and complexity to the vehicle. Common standards can help reduce duplication and make it easier for companies to participate in the ecosystem.
But standardization should not mean creating another closed ecosystem. India’s automotive technology base is expanding rapidly, with domestic OEMs, global Tier-1s, semiconductor companies, software developers, cloud providers and startups all becoming part of the value chain. Standards need to allow these participants to innovate while ensuring that their technologies can interoperate.
Indian OEMs have an opportunity to not just encourage but almost an obligation to enforce standardization on global Tier-1 providers. Some Indian OEMs have begun to mandate standardization, having burnt their fingers with proprietary non-scalable tech that raises the TCO. For India, therefore, standardization is ultimately about making the transition to software-defined vehicles more affordable, scalable and less disruptive. It can give manufacturers a common technology foundation while allowing them to differentiate where it matters — in vehicle design, safety features, software applications and the customer experience.
