Highlights of the Month

APRIL 2020

Ensuring Business Continuity during COVID-19 pandemic

April 2020 was a unique month for us and for most of the world too. No travelling to offices, no meeting colleagues around the water coolers and meeting rooms; no quick coffee breaks; constantly following the news about COVID-19 and its spread and hoping that KPITians, their families, clients, and partners are safe.

Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders necessitated that most KPITians worked remotely upholding commitments we made to clients. Many clients called us informing about changes in their business situations, need for different approaches – in a few cases impacting our operations too. However, at KPIT we understand that empathy and resilience will be the need of the hour and that’s what the teams are trying to do every day. Passion for mobility and technology is what continues to drive us.

With unprecedented challenges along the way, the teams at KPIT showed exemplary commitment. The comprehensive business continuity planning resulted in our ability to drive delivery from remote setups and ensuring that customers experience the same or higher productivity. KPIT's BCP planning involved:

  • A cross-functional Rapid Response Taskforce to plan and address various issues and take quick decisions
  • Getting physical and digital infrastructure readiness that enabled 97% of the workforce to work from home right from March 3rd week and ensuring stability all month long
  • Continuous employee communication
  • Approvals from customers were secured for working from home. Proactive customer and employee communications were made and alternative approaches were explored and implemented to boost productivity and create value during these times of working in the New Normal
  • To encourage continuous learning, 100 plus online courses were evaluated, compiled, and hosted on our learning platform
  • Further, as an ongoing process, KPIT is reviewing policies for facilitating remote work 

Overall, KPIT has seen several examples of rapid adaptation to this new normal. We are looking forward to a brighter and promising May 2020.

#TogetherApart

Socially Distant But United By The Passion For Mobility

The month started with an identity that brought forth the passion for mobility, technology, and every work KPITians do even while being socially distant. At an organizational level, KPIT did everything to enable its people to work from the safety of their homes and at individual levels, people settled into 'Working in the New Normal'. KPITians set up workplaces, took care of their loved ones, stayed productive, and stayed passionate for mobility. Providing food, accommodation and commuting assistance to employees in need during the lockdown. Providing medical assistance through our insurance and wellness partners. Persistent efforts to enable curfew passes and special vehicle movements.

Kishor Patil’s keynote address at NASSCOM

e-Confluence on 29th April

On the 29th of April, Mr. Kishor Patil, Co-Founder, CEO, and MD, KPIT delivered the keynote address. Mr. Patil spoke on the much-needed thrust on Execution Excellence during these times. He elaborated on the topic by pointing out at the key areas to be looked into, which are 1) Setting up a taskforce and building rigor, 2) Being flexible and nimble, 3) Collaboration, 4) Building milestone-based plans over time-based ones, 5) Building domain skills and competencies and 6) Cleaning up unnecessary processes.

Further, Mr. Patil spoke on resilience during such challenging times and elaborated on 1) Business response plan, 2) Conviction, 3) Sharp focus, 4) Conservation of resources, 5) A mindset of planning for the worst while being ready for the best, 6) Parallel focus on customers, people & investors, and 7) A positive mindset.

The e-Confluence was attended by more than 100 leaders from the ER&D ecosystem. It was engaging and lasted for more than 30 mins.

Mr. Kishor Patil

delivering the keynote address at NASSCOM

e-Confluence.

KPIT ventilator: Contributing through KPIT's
engineering expertise

Community service has been at the core of KPIT right since our inception. In this spirit, during these trying times of COVID-19, our engineering team designed a fully-featured ventilator.
Our solution equipped with unique features, draws on our strengths in mechanical/ electrical engineering as well as embedded software, bringing out our excellence through our engineering expertise and creativity.

The prototype has been reviewed and tested by multiple doctors, experts in the field, and we are partnering with the best in the industry for manufacturing. We expect to receive our formal official approval shortly and will soon get into production through our manufacturing partners. While the world puts up a fight against COVID-19, KPIT ventilator is our contribution to the world to help save lives and fight this pandemic.

In the meantime, an internal competition for KPITians was held, where they were asked to propose appropriate names for the ventilator. In response, many proposals were received from all around the organization and the winners will be announced soon.

A team led by Tejas Kshatriya has designed this full featured ventilator and Jayada Pandit looks after content & communication.

Base Model

Upgraded Model

Perspective

In case you missed out on reading some good tech articles by KPIT’s subject-matter experts, here are some of the best tech articles of 2019. We will be sharing each of the 5 technologically amazing articles of 2019 in the upcoming newsletters. Starting with the article:

Architectural Concepts for Autonomous Driving Applications

In the past years, the automobile industry has been dramatically improving the features implemented in vehicles aimed at assisting the driver in many different traffic situations. Commonly named Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), those features range from parking to highway Lane Keeping Assistance (LKA) even involving more complex functions such as Advanced Cruise Control (ACC). Such functions only require a limited number of sensors Read the article by Clicking Here

Automobelievers taking the leap

Patents filed for the month

KPIT has filed one provisional patent application for a "Portable Automated Resuscitator System and Method Thereof” in the Medical Domain.

Best place to learn

100+ Online Courses now open for all

Growth and learning are at the core of KPIT. Staying true to the commitment toward continuous learning, 100+ online courses were evaluated, compiled, and hosted on KPIT’s learning platform.
To explore the courses, visit the web page

Fun while Working from Home

KPIT Connect Week in the US

KPITians in the US participated in the KPIT Connect Week. Employees shared activities from their day-to-day life amidst the stay-at-home order. These activities were a fun way to reach out and keep everyone connected with their colleagues. KPITians in the US held group video calls, organized their home offices, shared their workout routine, culinary experiments, binge experience and more.

Socially Distant but continuing to contribute to society

Teaching Online at Thayimane (Foster home for destitute children)

In periods of social isolation and self-quarantine, it is difficult to feel connected to the outside world and spend your time constructively. In the midst of lockdown in India, KPITians are busy volunteering with the opportunity to feel connected to a cause close to their heart. Volunteers are teaching various interesting topics to the students at Thayimane (Foster home for destitute children) in Bengaluru. These regular online classes help students continue their learning, the classes also put a smile on KPITians as they feel connected to the cause of child education. Kudos to the students and all the volunteering KPITians!

Skill-based volunteering with Vision Empower (An NGO providing accessible solutions for the education of Visually Impaired)

A group of enthusiastic KPITians engaged in volunteering with a Bengaluru based NGO, Vision Empower (An NGO that provides accessible solutions for the education of Visually Impaired). These employee volunteers with their skill sets were involved in creating content (making videos, translation of documents) for the educational initiatives of Vision Empower.