Competitive Indian Aerospace & Defence industry in 10 yrs -Baba Kalyani

Given the pace of progress in the policy environment today India will have a highly competitive and substantially large Aerospace and Defence industry in the next 10 years, said Baba Kalyani, Chairman & Managing Director, Bharat Forge. He was speaking at the conference on Championing Manufacturing in India organized by Confederation of Indian Industry at New Delhi today.

In the last one and a half year several industry friendly measures such as defence licensing, opening of FDI, defence procurement policy (DPP), etc taken by the government have come as a big boost for the sector and  would support in creating the right ecosystem for the sector to grow and become globally competitive, expressed Mr Kalyani. Going forward creation of PPP’s would further support in harnessing the capabilities within the country and present a win –win situation for both government and industry, he stressed.

Lauding the various steps taken by the government to support the sector, Commodore Mukesh Bhargava (Retd), Head & Vice President (Special Projects Engineering Services, Larson and Toubro Ltd ,said that the government is moving in the right direction and the industry is confident to deliver to the expectations. In the current changed environment with government moving towards more of transparency and sharing it’s perspective policies with the public has come as a big support to the companies in building and further strengthening the required skills and infrastructure in the perspective.

Expressing his faith on the country’s preparedness with skilled human resources, quality infrastructure and technology for Defence and Aerospace sector, Mr Arijit Ghosh, President-Aerospace, Honeywell India underlined the need for a faster movement in creating conducive policies in the areas of land, labour laws, IPR and availability of financial capital which would not only support Aerospace and defence but also benefit all sectors in large.

Presenting his perspectives on the topic Mr Pratyush Kumar, President, Boeing India emphasized on the broad and deep capabilities India possessed in the Aerospace and Defence sector and stressed on the need for harnessing the same for achieving excellence. While a lot of progress has been done there is a further need to simplify and continuously fine-tune the issues related to availability of capital, labour, IPR and ease of doing business, he added.

Setting the context for the session Mr Subhranshu Das, Vice President, A&D, Asia, Forst & Sullivan said that while a great deal of  progress has been done in the Indian Defense and Aerospace segment,  going forward there is a need to further focus on MSME’s to realize things on ground. This would require creating a roadmap for making tier 3 and tier 4 companies globally competitive provide policy support in terms of industry and research collaborations and support export promotion for achieving scale.

Moderating the session, Mr Vishnu Som, Defence Editor, NDTV 24×7 said that the Aerospace and Defence sector of India possesses immense potential and there is need to focus on the areas of excellence and move faster in these areas to emerge as champions.