Thales: Supporting India’s big ambitions
As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, India provides extraordinary opportunities across sectors to build business partnerships. There has been resurgence in a push towards growth and self-reliance, very evident in India’s growing defence sector. Being one of the world’s largest defence spenders with an estimated spend of some two per cent share of its GDP, India is increasing efforts to boost indigenous research, development and manufacturing along with facilitating global defence players to invest in country, so as to enable India emerge as a global platform for the defence sector in the research, manufacturing and supply chain ecosystems.
The “Make in India” initiative is a step in the right direction for the defence industry, the policy expected to boost Indian industry across sectors including defence, thereby positioning India as a global manufacturing hub. This will not only help Indian industries become globally competitive but also allow companies like Thales to further support the country's modernisation needs. As an active contributor towards development of the Indian defence sector since 1953, Thales remains fully committed to the country. Helping India master decisive moments Since 1953, Thales has been assisting India achieve its big ambitions. As a longstanding partner, the organisation takes pride in having contributed towards nation building and solidifying its foundations by sharing its niche technologies and expertise in defence, transport, aerospace and digital security markets.
Thales has built up a reputation of being a trusted partner to all three branches of the Indian armed forces, providing them with flagship solutions ranging from combat aircraft, air defence systems, sensors (ground, ship-borne and airborne), tactical
communication and military avionics, electronic warfare, among others.
Thales has enhanced the technicaloperational capabilities of the IAF’s Mirage 2000 fleet. In July 2011, Thales and Dassault Aviation signed a contract for the upgrade of this fleet. Another game-changer is selection of the Rafale by the IAF with Thales providing a number of state-of-theart equipment and systems on-board this omnirole combat aircraft.
The company has also formed several other local partnerships from transfer of technology and supply chain perspectives. We have been working closely with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited ( HAL) for over five decades. We also have a strong working relationship with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) with whom we have formed a joint venture (JV) BEL-Thales Systems Limited (BTSL) dedicated to civilian and select ground-based military radars. With BTSL, Thales is jointly developing the PHAROS fire control radar for gun and missile systems that will support both domestic Indian and international markets. BTSL will also be undertaking the production of the LBREC – Low Band Receiver of the self-protection suite of the Rafale. Thales also has JVs with Samtel, L&T Technology Services and Reliance Aerostructure.
By sharing its technological expertise with indigenous partners, Thales touches the lives of billions of Indians each day. The organisation’s local partnerships and JVs reinforce the company’s commitment to the country. Focus on creating jobs Our objective is to make in India as well as export from India, a strong workforce of over 1,500 people working both directly with as well as indirectly through the supply chain partnerships built with Indian companies. Our plan is to triple this number in the next two-three years as we are looking forward to developing capabilities for local engineering, procurement from India and strengthening our local partnerships.
As we are setting up a state- of- theart Engineering Competence Centre in Bengaluru, we seek to hire over 2000 engineers in the next three-five years for this centre alone, a first-of-its kind engineering centre in India that will focus on software and hardware capabilities in the areas of civil as well as defence businesses, serving Thales’ global needs.
India is rich in engineering, human talents and certainly a source of competitiveness for our Group to grow. We further plan to invest in the country by partnering with customers, universities, commercial and technology partners, and to hire and train local talent to be as local as possible.
We look forward to participating in Aero India 2019.