Armed forces are essential to the very existence of any nation, boosting and maintaining its self-respect and power. One essential component, which makes armed forces confident are the power of its ammunition and related mobile and stationary equipment. Traditionally, India had been net importer of all ammunition and related equipment’s. This had exposed the vulnerability of our forces besides us becoming good users of multiple technologies and makes of systems. However in the last few decades, due to the offset policy adopted by the government, some level of local manufacturing has started. This has boosted our related industries, and in a short span of time we have become good manufacturers of locally sourced items.

Due to import of these critical supplies, we had become dependent on many countries and also vulnerable to sanctions. Additionally, this also burdened the exchequer to buy critical arms and ammunitions in U.S. dollar leading to the depreciation of the Indian rupee.

As defence related manufacturing industry is an investment and time intensive sector, Government’s willingness and initiatives are catalyst to the self-reliance initiative. Recent change in the government policy and its focus on becoming self-reliant in the defence sector has resulted in huge positive results. Ministry of Defence (MoD) has taken multiple steps to start the process of self-reliance as mentioned below,

• Blocking the import of some items required by armed forces
• Promoting manufacture of these blocked items by Indian industries
• Providing the development grants to develop these products
• Providing crucial infrastructure and support to test and approve these newly developed products
• And finally assuring the orders for these developed products, by the armed forces.

These unique initiatives coupled with very transparent and online procedure to award these projects and clear the bills quickly has increased the confidence of industries to work on defence related projects. This movement has attracted many startups and MSMEs to compete for the projects and create indigenous and innovative products. Results of this can be seen from the decreased import and increased export of defence industry related products.

This has also helped gain the confidence of our armed forces and its willingness to work with the local industries. Armed forces have started asking for next generation of technology and innovative solutions to its requirements. This demand and confidence of armed forces coupled with India’s strength in software and artificial intelligence sectors has started the new cycle of becoming designers of new products and technologies for defence applications.

As a result of these new initiatives by government, we can clearly see that India is confidently becoming self-reliant in many defence-related products and very soon, as a nation we will become a net exporter of various defence related products.

Evolution of Instron Technology as a defence supplier

Instron Technologies started with its offerings to corporate customers and achieved many successes. It was far easier to interact and transact with corporate customers and hence we focussed on our expanding our linkages with corporate world only. However, during the Covid pandemic, we saw a sharp drop in business activity from corporate customers and our operations were significantly affected.

During the same time, Government of India’s drive to promote Make in India and self-reliance in defence sectors exposed us to various initiatives of the MoD. We explored the Technology Development Fund (TDF), which is a joint initiative of the DRDO and the MoD, and which brings together the MSMEs and startups to focus on the needs of the country’s armed forces.

We secured the technology development project for developing a portable marine desalinator for the Indian Navy. This experience of efficient and transparent dealings with the government bodies changed our approach to work not only with the corporate world but also with defence sector related clients. This change in focus of the Government of India coupled with transparent and quick transactions helped us secure many other defence related projects under iDEX and DcPP. At present Instron is actively working to support the Make in India programme of the GoI and MoD and has established a separate business vertical to focus on the same.

Need to work on fundamental technologies

Due to the results of these various innovative initiatives by the Government and armed forces, as a nation we have very well embarked on the path for developing quality defence related products of global standards. However, we are still dependent on international suppliers for supply of few critical raw materials or technologies, manufacturing processes and electronics.

To become self-reliant in the true sense, we now must start working on developing fundamental technologies, supported by indigenous electronics components, materials and production.  Government has already initiated few schemes for promoting manufacturing in these areas for domestic applications. And eventually it should lead to increasing design and development capabilities for these fundamental technologies.

Instron Technologies LLP

Instron Technologies LLP is Pune based organisation working in the area of Digital Factory Solutions, Process Plants and Test Bench Systems. Our defence related solutions are offered under Process Plants business vertical. We are known to solve the mission critical problems of customers and deliver tangible saving through our innovative solutions. We could do this because of our in-house young and dynamic team with cross-domain expertise. We have delivered several success stories for our 150+ domestic and international clients.

-The writer is a co-founder of Pune-based Instron Technologies LLP. He can be contacted on: mpsaindane@instrontechnologies.com