ESTECO Users’ Meeting India 2025: pushing the boundaries of digital engineering

The third edition of the ESTECO India Users’ Meeting was held on March 5, 2025, in Pune and was a success.
After the inaugural event in Pune in 2018 and the second edition in Bangalore in 2023 - our first since the pandemic - we were excited to return to Pune after seven years. This year’s event saw an impressive turnout, with over 137 delegates from 43 companies such as Mahindra and Mahindra, SLB, Stellantis, Tata Motors, and Whirlpool.

A rich agenda with industry leaders

The event featured 12 customer presentations, one panel discussion, and four ESTECO-led presentations. In total, 26 speakers — including 17 customer presenters, four panelists, and four ESTECO representatives — contributed to an insightful and engaging program.
The day started with a keynote session by Nader Fateh, Vice President of Business Development, who delivered a talk on ESTECO and its 25 years of innovation. He traced ESTECO’s journey from its foundation to its expansion into North America and India. Highlighting ESTECO’s rich history of innovation and industry-first achievements, he emphasized how our core values — especially customer-centric innovation — keep us ahead of the competition in solving real-world engineering challenges. Nader also discussed our strategic evolution, from a single-user solution to a comprehensive collaborative platform, culminating in the development of modeFRONTIER and VOLTA.

Keynote address: simulation-led design challenges and future at Tata Motors

Amol Apte, Head of Digital Engineering at Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles, delivered a compelling keynote titled “Simulation-led design: challenges and future.” Addressing the complexities of emerging automotive technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs), advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), and active safety, Amol underscored the increasing importance of cost, quality, and compliance in engineering. He highlighted how digital coverage, collaboration, and democratization drive efficiency in validation and verification processes. While simulations are incredibly powerful, he noted that testing remains crucial where physics-based models aren’t yet fully understood. The coexistence of simulation and testing, alongside AI/ML-driven approaches, will be the key to optimizing product development cycles.

Panel discussion: the impact of digital engineering and machine learning

A major highlight of the day was the panel discussion on the impact of digital engineering methods and machine learning on modern product development processes. Moderated by Nachiket Kasarekar — ESTECO’s Director of Customer Success, the panel featured distinguished industry experts: Prafull Gandhi — Director, Category Lead at Whirlpool, Chandrakant Deshmukh — Head, CAE Methods Development at Mahindra, Neeraj Sahasrabuddhe — Technical Specialist at Cummins, and Ganesh Kakade — Manager of Modeling & Simulation group at SLB.
Representing diverse industries such as automotive, oil & gas, industrial manufacturing, and consumer goods, the panelists shared insights on how machine learning is transforming engineering design workflows and how organizations are adapting to these advancements. The discussion was highly engaging, with audience members actively participating in the conversation.

Showcasing real-world success stories with ESTECO Technology

Several organizations presented case studies showcasing how ESTECO’s solutions drive engineering excellence across multiple domains.

Automotive

Mahindra Trucks and Buses optimized a truck cabin design, reducing weight by 35.5 kg while maintaining structural integrity using modeFRONTIER. Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles demonstrated ride and handling calibration enhancements, while Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles optimized a composite chassis, increasing strength without adding mass. Stellantis showcased noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) optimization with modeFRONTIER, achieving a 10% reduction in peak vibrations.

Aerospace

The Aeronautical Development Agency addresses a fighter aircraft wing design challenge, handling 350+ input variables and 375 constraints, ultimately reducing mass by 15% through automation. Aereo, a startup in the drone mapping space, showcased trade-space analysis for new drone configurations, optimizing flight time and minimizing downtime to enhance ROI.

Consumer Goods

Whirlpool used multi-objective optimization for front-load washing machines, reducing design optimization time by 90%.

Oil & Gas

SLB presented a democratization case study using VOLTA, where they developed a Runbox app (VOLTA verticalization) that streamlined FEA model creation, execution, and report generation, significantly reducing manual interventions.

ESTECO presentations: AI/ML-driven innovation

The ESTECO team delivered four key presentations on the latest advancements in AI and digital engineering:
Haysam Telib, CEO of Optimad - an ESTECO company, presented “ESTECO’s journey towards a comprehensive MLOps platform for engineers”, outlining how the company is developing scalable frameworks to integrate AI/ML into engineering workflows. In the context of ESTECO Technology, Haysam provided an overview of explainable AI models, which are inspectable and constructed with building blocks that can be interpreted and even questioned by the end-user. Once principles and their limitations are well understood, users will gain confidence in the models and will start using them confidently. ESTECO’s mission is to empower engineers with this kind of AI/ML technology.

Danilo Di Stefano, modeFRONTIER Product Manager, showcased “AI/ML-driven sustainable engineering design optimization with modeFRONTIER”, demonstrating how AI accelerates smarter, more effective product development.
Danilo’s presentation delved into how modeFRONTIER's advanced automation capabilities and AI-driven design exploration can dramatically enhance product performance. The focus was on the latest AI-powered features, highlighting how they can revolutionize the predictive modeling process. A key part of the presentation was modeFRONTIER’s Python ecosystem which allows users to execute code within the simulation workflow and import Python-based machine learning libraries for predictive modeling. Through pyFRONTIER, users gain interactive access to modeFRONTIER from an external Python interpreter (IDE or external solver) via a dedicated set of Python APIs. pyCONSOLE adds the power of Python for more flexible and efficient design exploration. By seamlessly integrating the Python shell within modeFRONTIER's design space, users get direct access to design variables, objectives, and constraints.

Marco Turchetto, VOLTA Product Manager, delivered “VOLTA: the future of simulation-driven design”, highlighting VOLTA’s capabilities in enhancing engineering collaboration for multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and maximizing business value.
Marco explained how VOLTA digital engineering platform for SPDM and MDO shapes the future of simulation-driven design product development. By leveraging a vendor-neutral ecosystem, rapid deployment (standalone or cloud-native), and hyperautomation capabilities, VOLTA enables organizations to streamline their engineering workflows, enhance collaboration, and maximize business value.
During the presentation, Marco explored the future of simulation-driven design through VOLTA’s three core principles:

• User experience. VOLTA’s intuitive interfaces reduce learning curves and enhance engineering efficiency. Our proprietary design system (SOUL) plays a crucial role in product development and extends to API-based customizations. VOLTA users can use this system to create tailored verticalizations that ensure a consistent user experience across the entire platform.
• Cloud microservices architecture. VOLTA enables companies to meet future needs with a scalable approach that centralizes application management and reduces costs.
• Business Process Management-based hyperautomation capabilities. The platform provides tools that capture and automate simulation workflows, and engineering and business processes.

Networking, engagement, and takeaways

The event provided strong networking opportunities, with many attendees engaging in one-on-one discussions with speakers during breaks.

The Indian Space Research Organization team from Bangalore held a dedicated session with Amol Apte — Head of Digital Solutions from Tata Motors — to explore potential collaborations.

A special thank you to our global team. From stage setup, branding, and logistics to agenda planning, speaker coordination, and audience engagement, teams across multiple geographies and time zones worked tirelessly to ensure the success of UM25 India. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to making this event a resounding success.
We look forward to continuing our journey of innovation and collaboration with the ESTECO community in the years to come. See you at the next ESTECO Users' Meeting!