Blackberry has opened an IoT centre of excellence, engineering and innovation in Hyderabad, India.

The engineering centre is recruiting Indian embedded software engineers to help build software-defined-vehicles (SDVs) and innovation in other IoT industries, using the company’s safety-certified QNX product portfolio and Ivy in-vehicle software platform.

Ahead of the company’s annual TechForum India event in Bangalore next week, Blackberry is announcing plans to scale up operations to meet growing industry demand for its mission-critical embedded software and engineering services, both in India and worldwide. By the end of 2023, the Hyderabad facility – set to be the second largest for Blackberry’s IoT division globally after Canada – will host over 100 software engineers across a wide range of technology positions and skill sets, including senior management, technical project management, product engineering, cloud software development, integration and service delivery.

“Today is another milestone for Blackberry’s ongoing investment in skills and innovation and signifies the importance of India as a home to world-class software innovators,” said Mattias Eriksson, president of Blackberry IoT. “We are pleased to expand Blackberry IoT’s global software innovation network in Hyderabad, underscoring our commitment to serve our customers and partners and continue our rapid growth as an IoT software leader, especially in the automotive sector.”

Responsible for innovation, embedded software product development and engineering services, the teams will first use the QNX software development platform (SDP) evaluation hardware and software to design and accelerate the development of systems that are safe, secure and offer real-time performance. This includes the QNX Accelerate initiative, offering QNX in the cloud to accelerate product development and reduce time to market for mission-critical industries including automotive, medical devices, industrial controls, robotics, aerospace, defence and heavy machinery.

Ivy software development is planned to roll-out later in 2023, bringing developers and OEMs with operations in India closer to the innovation cycle, offering access to benefits such as optimised data processing using on-vehicle machine learning.

QNX is embedded in 215 million vehicles worldwide, in production with 45 OEMs and seven auto tier-one suppliers worldwide. Customers include Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Stellantis, BMW, Aptiv, Bosch, Ford, GM, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Volkswagen. Similarly, 24 of the top 25 EV automakers use Blackberry’s software for the foundation of future autonomous drive vehicle systems.

“India is an important market for local and global manufacturers in automotive and IoT sectors, particularly in Hyderabad, an ecosystem of engineering talent,” said Eriksson. “This facility will help Blackberry IoT to co-develop and co-innovate more closely with our customers and partners based in India, giving talented developers and engineers the opportunity to build the best solutions for complex problems for automotive and other embedded software industries.”