When Jonas Olsson first moved to India in 2006, the plan was simple: spend 18 months setting up the SAP-competence centre for Volvo Group in Bangalore. But like many long-term expatriate stories in the country, this one quietly rewrote itself.
Eighteen months became three years; three years became a permanent relocation. Nearly two decades later, Olsson is still in Bengaluru, this time building something new, and building it from scratch.
Today, as head of Volvo Cars India Tech Hub, Olsson is leading the Swedish automaker’s conscious execution of the strategy to create a full-fledged digital capability centre in the country. It is a role that draws directly on his past experience: he previously built the SAP practice at Volvo Group India from one person to 300. “We grew the SAP practice under me from one to around 300 when I left,” he recalled.
The long road
Volvo Cars, unlike its European peers, arrived late to the GCC party. Mercedes-Benz and several other auto giants embedded engineering and tech capabilities in India long ago. Volvo Cars, by contrast, spent many years relying on outsourced partners for Indian talent, observing the offshoring and outsourcing market evolve, grow and mature as the global business became increasingly software-driven. The real trigger for change was not isolated to the Indian opportunity itself but also a growing need for doing internal competence shifts quickly.
“The predominant factor was the risk of becoming too dependent on partners in areas and domains where we need our own employees in order to secure long-term knowledge, innovation and know-how and at the same time utilizing our partners for scale, operations and managing competence fluctuations,” he said.
Europe’s shrinking talent availability and rising costs accelerated the shift. “Several of the competences we wanted to recruit were not available to a great extent in Europe anymore, at least not at affordable cost levels,” he said. India, in contrast, offered both depth and elasticity. “You can get everything from mainframe to emerging tech, junior to very senior people.”
By the end of 2020, the board made a strategic call: establish a tech hub in Bengaluru that’s a fully integrated part of Volvo Cars’ global digital ecosystem from the start.
The hub today has around 250 employees. Olsson expects it to reach about 420 by the end of this year. “True success is if we can bring more value to the company, without having a dramatic increase in headcount. Success isn’t measured solely on the size of your organisation anymore, but what value your people bring”.
Keeping busy and doing the right things
Olsson is clear about what the Bengaluru hub is and what it is not.
“We hire people here in India as we would hire them anywhere, in the US, in Sweden, in China,” he said. “India is not a legacy centre, not a centre for transactional activities, not a back office.”
This framing shapes Volvo Cars’ entire talent strategy. Unlike traditional GCCs that often begin at the low end of the value chain, the tech hub consciously recruited leadership, senior engineering roles and architects from the very beginning, ensuring the GCC laid the foundation for offering a complete career journey for talents recruited.
The first two years were an internal test. “Of course, you test: can you deliver? Is the quality good enough?” Olsson said. Once the hub proved itself, the dynamic flipped.
“During the early days, we had to scout around for opportunities and work, now we ensure that the opportunities coming our way are the right ones from a long-term perspective for Volvo Cars, and in line with our site strategy.
Ambitions and guardrails
The current strategic focus is digital and IT. Depending on strategic decisions, geopolitical context and data privacy laws and compliance requirements, expansion into other competency areas might also be on the radar in India for Volvo Cars, developing the hub towards a cross-functional GCC.
“Several countries where Volvo Cars operate have very stringent digital privacy laws, often making regionalization rather than globalization a desired choice, also when it comes to digital & IT. This of course poses certain challenges on what can and cannot be done from India. Growth therefore will depend as much on these geopolitical and regulatory aspects, as on talent availability and our long term strategy,” said Olsson.
So when asked how big the India hub could become by 2030, Olsson laughed and said, “The sky is the limit.” But almost immediately, as an afterthought, clarified.
“It depends on how we deliver excellence, how we stay compliant with laws and compliances and also how we can ensure to deliver more value without simply adding more people.
A two-decade lens
Olsson has hired and led Indian teams since 2006, giving him a broad view of the country’s tech talent evolution. One of the biggest shifts, he said, is the move away from a purely academic, examination-driven assessment of capability.
“When I moved here, if you had a degree from IIT with a high passing percentage, you were automatically seen as a high-performing person. But that was not always the case,” he said. “It was more important to pass the technical round and answer the questions. Today that’s somewhat of a legacy way of assessing knowledge, when knowledge often is available at the click of a button, through ChatGPT or Google.”
He sees meaningful change today. “It has definitely changed. And it is changing. Knowledge and experience is also about social skills, ability to lead self and others, ability to adapt to change and ability to communicate with clarity and passion to stakeholders in multiple countries, cultures and levels in the organization.”
But he believes the next frontier is leadership. “We still have challenges in India with an old-school management style sometimes,” he said. “You’re not always encouraged to ask questions or think critically. You’re told, ‘This is how it is.’”
Such patterns, he believes, will evolve, but gradually. “It will take time,” he said. “But it is changing.”
Leaning on campuses to prepare for the future
Many GCCs are doubling down on campus programs to address talent shortages. Volvo Cars too works with colleges, but Olsson calls it a different kind of intervention.
“You typically cannot go to a college and recruit senior experienced architects,” he said. “Campus programs for us are a long-term commitment, where we take people on, invest in them, groom them, and expose them to various challenges in the organization, over time.”
Short-term needs require a different playbook. Volvo uses a flexible staffing model through partner companies and consultant agencies. It also deliberately avoids chasing the ‘perfect’ candidate.
“The job ads sometimes describe someone who has been with Volvo Cars for many years, and that too at our headquarters in Sweden,” he said. “You can’t find that person here.”
Instead, they try to find candidates that have a cultural and value match with Volvo Cars, and who meet 75 to 80 per cent of the technical criteria, and then set stretch goals, giving them the opportunity to learn and grow with the company.
“If someone is at or very close to a 100 per cent match of all technical requirements, what’s the challenge for them? We then might very early on get into a discussion of finding a next step for the person, because otherwise we’d quickly face issues with resignations and unwanted attrition”.
Delivery, not geography
The global automotive market is under stress, and cost efficiency has become non-negotiable. That is one reason the India hub is expanding rapidly. But Olsson is more interested in what happens after the cost argument fades.
“When you launch the organisation, you have to scout for opportunities and then prove yourself that you can deliver. Once you have overcome the initial challenges, apprehensions and hiccups, you simply become part of the delivery ecosystem, and a trusted and appreciated player and contributor.”
He believes the Volvo Cars India Tech Hub is already there today, and the future looks bright.
