How Freudenberg Built a Startup-Style Innovation Engine for Emerging Tech

**Vishwanath Hegadekatte** (0:00)
We have begun to use AI and agentic AI for the full setting process itself. So that gives us a much better picture of the megatrend.

**Peter High** (0:11)
Welcome to Technovation. I'm your host, Peter High. My guest today is Vishwanath Hegadekatte. Vish leads advanced innovation initiatives within Freudenberg Group, a nearly 200-year-old global technology company, headquartered in Weinheim, Germany.
The company's business spans advanced materials, ceiling technologies, filtration, mobility, medical, and industrial solutions. Vish leads an organization inside Freudenberg, known as Freudenberg Technology Innovation or FTI, an innovation team focused on emerging technologies, including AI, autonomous robotics, and advanced material design. Despite operating within a large global enterprise, the group functions with speed and experimentation mindset of a startup, bringing together highly specialized experts from across the company to explore disruptive technologies and new business opportunities. The team also collaborates closely with universities, national laboratories, and government agencies to gain early access to emerging technologies and research. I look forward to speaking with Vish about what it takes to create a fast-moving innovation engine inside a global enterprise, how AI and robotics are reshaping industrial R&D, and how organizations can foster a culture of experimentation while still operating at scale.
Vish, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today.

**Vishwanath Hegadekatte** (1:24)
Thank you very much, Peter, for a great introduction. It's great to be here with you today.

**Peter High** (1:30)
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That's celonis.com/technovation and now on to the interview. Well, Vish, maybe we begin with Freudenberg Group's business, generally speaking. I wonder if you could provide some context as to the business you're a part of.

**Vishwanath Hegadekatte** (2:35)
Peter, you gave a pretty good introduction about Freudenberg in your opening statements. Freudenberg is a 177-year-old company which is still located in the same location where it was established. It is located in the center of the city in Weinheim, Germany.
Currently, the Freudenberg Group consists of nine business groups, soon to be ten business groups.
Out of these nine business groups, we are known for ceiling technologies. That's where we started, actually. Started off as a tannery, making leather, and then using leather for ceiling applications during the industrial revolution, and then growing from there organically and inorganically. So, having both kinds of ceiling technologies for automotive applications, once the automotive revolution started, as well as industrial applications for mechanical seals. From there, we have grown to include medical devices, nonwoven fabrics for technical textiles, specialty chemicals where we make world-class lubricants and release agents. And also, in fact, we actually make coatings on candies, so that the candies do not stick to one another. So there's a wide variety of materials and applications that Freudenberg Group is active in. In fact, you are using our products, you just don't know which one of them.

**Peter High** (4:18)
That's fascinating. What a diverse array of seals that you provide. We'd love to understand further about FTI and its genesis, as well as how it serves the broader business, if you wouldn't mind providing that overview as well.

**Vishwanath Hegadekatte** (4:32)
Okay. So FTI stands for Freudenberg Technology Innovation. So this is a corporate innovation function within the Freudenberg Group. So we kind of act, I'm actually Director of Innovation for FTI in North America and responsible for the North American team. So we work very closely with all our business groups. So that means we are constantly working with different kinds of materials and products. And our mandate is to look at materials and products and technologies that are anywhere between three years to nine-year time frame.
So we're constantly looking for what is out there in the horizon. That's our mandate. And then we help our business groups bring these technologies in or prepare them for these technologies and products in markets.