Make In India: The Early Trail Blazers
When did you last hear about Indian military equipment being sold to the US SEALS and Mossad? Or of an Indian drone company overcoming competition from established OEMs to win a global tender? Or about an Indian small arms manufacturer producing sniper rifles which outgunned two world leaders in a head-to-head contest? Or a local defence electronics player which is taking over established companies overseas in its quest to emerge as a leader in the glass cockpit segment of the fighter aircraft market?
These are not the usual heavies who dominate India’s military industrial complex. Not the entities which have traditionally serial-produced fighter jets or top-of-the-line warships or contributed significantly to much marquee programmes like the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) to provide India the undersea leg of its nuclear weapons triad or tied up with the world’s leading aerospace company to set up a full-spectrum assembly line for a military transport aircraft or manufacture heavy artillery.
Cutting-edge startups with modest funding are the bright sparks which are lighting up the landscape as India seeks to reboot its military industrial complex to pivot to Aatmanirbharta or self-reliance to end dependence on arms imports. Raised from scratch, these young entities are built around highly capable R&D teams which are creating their own technology and IPs, their business models are built around creating an international footprint and they seek to be leaders in their segments, often as OEMs.
Drone maker ideaForge
Mumbai-based ideaForge Technology made a splash in March by bagging an Indian Army contract for its ‘Switch’ drones in a global competition involving established OEMs from Israel, France and Russia. These drones are meant for surveillance around some of the world’s highest and harshest battlefields.
As arms bazaar deals go, this was a relatively small contract valued about USD 20 million for a reported 200 systems. But it was a significant victory.
The Switch UAV was the only system that emerged successful from the rigorous testing and field trials that the Indian Army is well known for. The success was built around the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) approach.
“The traditional understanding was that a fixed wing UAV would be the ideal solution for last-mile deployments. On analysing the actual operational constraints that the Army faced, ideaForge realised that a VTOL platform which can take off without a runway or by hand launching, would be the ideal solution,” said Ankit Mehta, Co-founder and CEO, ideaForge.
“Our Switch UAV weighs less than 7 kg as against the competition which fielded products in the 12-16 kg range, almost two times heavier with 30 per cent lower flight time than ours, delivering imagery with lower technology,” he said. The victory underscored ideaForge’s business model: To be the best in its class globally.
An IIT Mumbai and MIT alumnus, Mehta’s VTOL drone first came to prominence in 2009 when it was featured in the Bollywood film Three Idiots. He now heads India’s largest drone maker. An ideaForge drone takes off every six minutes across the country, running a range of tasks ranging from classified military surveillance missions to mapping agricultural land across 6.6 lakh villages, providing sub-5 cm resolution. His flying machines have established their reliability in over 220,000 missions.
“Our drones are ‘Built like a bird and tested like a tank’, an expression we coined as our systems were undergoing the harshest field trials and lab testing as a part of our journey to bagging this contract,” says Mehta, savouring victory in the military drone contract. “The system is built to enable a soldier with elementary education to operate it,” he explains.
“Looking ahead, we want to take this expertise across the world, to everyone in need of protecting their borders or to empower their forces with unprecedented last-mile situational awareness,” he says.
ideaForge tapped into the opportunity in the security space when its founders saw the Indian armed forces struggling to locate gunmen in the maze of hotels during the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack.
Nano drones and swarms
Having grown into the biggest supplier of drones to India’s security forces, having already supplied about 1,500 machines for functions ranging from border surveillance to counter-insurgency and crowd management, the company is now venturing into nano technology: 15 gm nano drones capable of surveillance over a distance of 1 km without the target being aware of it. Swarms is another area of interest.
Mehta feels “we don’t respect ourselves enough” and urges military users to not always look for “high-end” equipment for every task. “We need to change the definition of high-end. You cannot deploy a Predator over every city. We’re high-end in Ladakh. Nobody else can operate at that height. The narrative has to change. We’re not inferior,” he reasons.
Mindsets are changing. “This contract for mini VTOL UAVs is the result of a five-year-long intensive procurement procedure. We are happy that the contract has been awarded to an Indian firm, ideaForge, who have proven the test of time, weather, terrain and performance against other global systems, contributing to the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat,” observers Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia (Retd), former Director-General Military Operations and Director CENJOWS.
Tonbo Imaging & electro-optics
And exciting new startups are driving the change in mindset. Like Bengaluru-based Tonbo Imaging, which, in the first decade of its existence, has quite stirred the pot in the global market for electro-optics, weapon sights and seekers – the eyes and brains of weapon systems on modern battlefields. Just consider its marquee list of customers: US SEALS, French Special Forces, Mossad.
More bragging rights: Every single electro-optical piece and night vision device carried by the Indian Army Special Forces in the daring cross-border attack launched from Uri in Kashmir was supplied by Tonbo.
This 10-year-old venture has competed against global leaders Israel’s Rafael and France’s Thales on their home turfs and won. Tonbo is supplying electro-optical equipment for Rafael’s much-in-demand kamikaze drones. It is contributing three high-tech systems to be installed on the India’s AEW&C based on the Airbus C-295 aircraft. Post the gaps which showed up in the aerial confrontation with Pakistan after India’s cross-border air attack on a terrorist camp at Balakot in 2019, development of the new AEW&C by the Centre for Air Borne Systems (CABS) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation is one of the principal priorities in the scaling up of air combat capability.
It is providing seekers to Indian industry leaders Bharat Dynamics, infrared seekers for man portable anti-tank guided missiles and electro optics for the Arjun Mk 2 Main Battle Tank; night vision sites to small arms major Beretta. Its repertoire includes handheld thermal imagers and helmet-mounted night vision.
What would have appeared an improbable journey in 2012 started with an intrepid group led by Arvind Lakshmikumar, who earned his spurs at DARPA and NASA after studying robotics at Carnegie Melon in the US.
The VC-funded Tonbo started with the “startup mentality” of investing in people, confides Lakshmikumar, Founder and CEO. This served it well in pursuing the Silicon Valley approach to focus on building technology.
Raising capital wasn’t easy 10 years ago for an Indian startup in defence. “Defence was perceived as a dirty business. VCs were not interested. We positioned ourselves as a core imaging technology company, with defence as one vertical,” he recalls.
“The first five years were devoted to building fundamental technologies and hiring the right people,” says Lakshmikumar. “We followed the Apple model of investing in technology development, owning IPs and then outsourcing production to allow for high margins,” he narrates. About two-thirds of the thin 90-strong Tonbo workforce is engaged in R&D.
“While our money went into people, it was still just one-tenth of what Rafael or Thales would have spent,” he says.
The approach was not to limited to India either in terms of markets or hiring of personnel. The results impressed the market. “The very demanding French Special Forces could not believe that the weapon sights we sold were made in India,” recalls Lakshmikumar on what it took to change perceptions.
Tonbo sights, besides being aesthetically designed, at 400 gm are at least three times lighter than others made in India by giants like the PSU Bharat Electronics (BEL). The weight reduction had been achieved by use of lighter materials like titanium and magnesium alloys. His weapon sights offered to Indian paramilitaries are significantly lower in cost despite outscoring the big company competition in performance. Mossad’s buying decision was based on lower weight and longer endurance of the weapon sights.
“Big players in India have not been interested in R&D. Foreign inputs passed off as R&D. They are happy to build to print. There’s no aspiration to be, say, a Raytheon. They can’t sell in the international market,” observes the Tonbo founder. That’s the culture that the new players are seeking to change.
Acknowledging that “defence is not a scalable business in India” for a startup, Tonbo’s model was to live the motto of Make in India for the world and address the global market.
The business model involved leveraging successes in the global market to subsidise the same equipment for India. “It’s like selling a Ferrari for the cost of a local sedan,” he says. Sixty per cent of business now is global.
Also, the approach is not to be transactional and instead build a relationship both for the Indian and the global markets. “We assembled a gunner sight on Jordan’s Cavalry Recce Vehicle locally. Similarly, localisation helped us build a relationship in Saudi Arabia,” says the CEO.
SSS Defence & small arms
Another stand-out startup riding the inescapable reality that foreign supplies are unviable is Bengaluru SSS Defence, a division of SSS, Asia’s largest spring maker and a big supplier to the automotive sector.
In five years, SSS Defence rose from a startup, leveraging the metallurgy competence and background in high-quality process manufacturing of its parent company to emerge as a small arms manufacturer of promise.
Results were visible in a recent procurement of sniper rifles by the National Security Guards. In the trials, SSS Defence incredibly went head-to-head with world leaders like Barrett from the US.
“We were greenhorns in the business. The international competitors came with their own shooters for the trials. We could validate our sniper rifles only after the NSG offered to provide us a shooter,” recalls a bemused Vivek Krishnan, CEO of SSS Defence, who heads an intrepid team which is driven by the purpose of producing high-quality weapons as a contribution to India’s self-reliance in small arms.
The learning curve in five years has been steep. Timelines were crunched with additive technology. After the NSG trials, weapon experts and personnel with military experience, including a retired sniper, were hired to walk swiftly up the steep curve, understand military tactics and learn the requirements of users. The core team comprises 19 R&D personnel.
“To demonstrate our commitment, we set up a 150-metre underground proof testing tunnel, in which even a 120 mm gun can be tested. Even the Ordnance Factories (since reorganised as public sector companies) do not have this facility,” says Krishnan.
SSS Defence cut its teeth in the small arms trade by bagging orders to upgrade the Indian Army’s AK-47 assault rifles and the Dragunov sniper rifles. To do so, the startup defeated the Israeli company Fab Defence in a tender of the Army’s South-Western Command. The Army was, till then, dependent on upgrades on this Israeli company.
“We upgrade the AK-47s at a cost 20 per cent cheaper than the global benchmark,” says Krishnan. The results were impressive. A rail system was added to mount optical sights and a tactical flashlight provided. A muzzle break was added to stabilise the weapon and make it more accurate. The wooden butt was replaced by high-quality polymer. The Indian Army’s upgraded AK-47 looks like a different gun.
Similarly, the 1963 vintage Dragunov sniper rifle was upgraded to give it night vision capability and make it more contemporary for counter-insurgency operations. SSS Defence then embarked on developing a family of assault and sniper rifles and carbines.
Krishnan professes Make in India as an article of faith. “There is no alternative to self-reliance. The AK-203 rifle identified for the Indian Army is being phased out by Russia. Foreign-origin sniper rifles have a long service lead time. The US sniper rifles are made for deserts, whereas our primary requirement is in the mountains. The imported SIG Sauer assault rifle is reported to have a problem of recoil. These weapons often have to be taken back to the country of origin for repair, denying availability for as long as six months sometimes,” he shares. “Locally, there’s traditionally been a DRDO-OFB stranglehold over the small arms market, which has had sub-optimal output,” he adds.
He believes that a “void” in the international small arms market, traditionally dominated by US and German companies, has created an opportunity for alternative high-quality gun manufacturers to emerge. The SSS Defence model too hinges on being a global supplier.
Samtel Avionics
Exports is the mantra for Samtel Avionics too, a key supplier of cockpit displays for the Sukhoi-30MKI and the Light Combat Aircraft, and now involved with the HPT-40 trainer and Light Combat Helicopter programmes. “We’re aiming for 50 per cent turnover from exports,” says CEO Puneet Kaura, who’s driven a turnover of over Rs 400 crore on cockpit displays.
Through the acquisition of a Thales subsidiary in Germany, Samtel’s customer base has expanded to include the US, Royal and French Air Forces.
But the home market in India provides the springboard. Kaura can vouch for that. His company’s JV with Hindustan Aeronautics (HAL) was the first public-private partnership involving India’s aerospace behemoth.
Samtel will also be a Tier-1 supplier to the Tata-Airbus consortium for a major electronic sub-system for the manufacture of the C-295 military transport aircraft in India.
The government’s Aatmanirbharta policy has given a big push to niche players like Kaura, as high-end electronics which is the core competence of his company accounts for about 30 per cent of the cost of an aircraft. “Aatmanirbharta presses the market to indigenise and find local solutions. The need for import substitution has not only given us business but also lifted standards because our output has to match the best,” he says.
Samtel was well positioned to be included in the supply chains of OEMs like BAE and Honeywell because of the requirements of indigenisation and offsets.
The exposure to OEMs has enabled Samtel to ramp up capability. “We own about 80-90 per cent of the IPRs for our products,” says Kaura.
This is not happenstance. Sixty per cent of Samtel Avionics’ workforce is devoted to R&D. “We invest at least 15 per cent of our turnover on R&D. Typically, we’ve invested about Rs 100 crore annually. We plan to double this figure next year,” discloses Kaura, as his company eyes weapon sensors, electronic warfare equipment and UAV payloads as areas for expansion. The common thread running through the success stories of all emerging startups of India’s military industrial complex is, indeed, ownership of technology.
