Date: 29/09/2014

Defence electronics opportunities in India: fruit not hanging that high

When you design and sell an electronics product, success at the first instance of its launch is less probable. For a company with strong innovation urge, failure at first attempt is not so big deal. To become successful in self branded electronics product design, significant amount of perseverance and patience required. It's going to be hard until the company sees good amount of revenue. But once the product becomes popular in the market, there are less chances for the company to fail provided it continue to innovate.

Compared to offering design services, designing and selling a product is basically aiming for high hanging fruits. So if this is about general market itself, but when it comes to aerospace and defence market, the fruit is at even more higher level. Not only because of technology challenges but also due to huge regulations by the authority.

In India, there are significant amount of rules and regulations in the defence electronics market. There are not many companies in India who are into defence electronics. Because of this, India is importing lot of the electronics hardware for defence applications.

To increase the indigenous content of electronics in defence equipment, Government of India is pushing for more private company participation in defence equipment production.

Recently at the event titled the 'Deftronics' organised by India electronics and semiconductor Association (IESA) and MMI, defence industry experts explained the opportunities and challenges in the defence electronics market.

To tell you the size of the India's defence market, the cake, if not fruit is quite big, around US$ 78 Billion.

Col. H. S. Shankar, Chairman and Managing Director, Alpha Designs Technologies said though the market is very attractive, to design a electronic product for a defence equipment you need lot of 'tapasya".

Dr. A Sivathanu Pillai, BrahMos aerospace founder and noted scientist was telling the attendees never to doubt the capability of Indian engineers. Well, there is no better example than the Mars orbiter mission.

Along with the lines of Make in India policy, Government of India is in the process of making things easier for private companies to participate in Indian defence manufacturing. Government is removing some of the restrictions. In other words the fruit is not hanging that high.

Once your product becomes successful and is accepted in the market, you can only grow wider and bigger, by cross applying the product knowledge to both general market and aerospace/defense.
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N