Ashish Saraf, vice-president and nation director, Thales India.
French electronics main Thales is considerably increasing its investments in addition to sourcing from India. A three way partnership, Thales Reliance Defence Systems Ltd., in Nagpur is now the Group’s world manufacturing centre for airport navigational aids, whereas Bharat Electronics Limited-Thales Systems in Bangalore manufactures high-tech merchandise resembling low-band receivers for the digital warfare suite of Rafale jets. “We are trying to expand and strengthen our local footprint,” says Ashish Saraf, vice-president and nation director, Thales India.
India is presently negotiating the acquisition of 26 Rafale-M jets for the Navy.
In addition, Thales shall be establishing a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility in Delhi-National Capital Region with “multi-million-Euro” funding for its Indian airline prospects centered in the direction of avionics, Mr. Ashraf mentioned in a written interview to The Hindu. “India is a strategic country for Thales with immense potential across our key markets including defence, aerospace as well as digital identity and security solutions. We take pride in our partnership with India built over the past seven decades,” he mentioned.
Elaborating on the MRO facility, he mentioned that “combining the strengths of Indian civil aviation market with Thales’s prowess in avionics”, they’re investing in an MRO set-up in India to present “world-class service efficiency” to their airline prospects. “In the spirit of ‘Make in India’, we are also further building on our defence foothold by developing local services capacity to better support our Indian defence customers to achieve their operational readiness as well as provide all integrated logistics support in India, including maintenance, spare parts, and training,” Mr. Ashraf said.
Stating that they’ve steadily constructed superior in-country capabilities throughout manufacturing, crucial programs, and companies in India by way of native groups and collaborations, Mr. Ashraf mentioned their goal has been “Make in India for India and for the world”, enabling the native business to play a higher position in worldwide markets. “We are investing in the larger supply chain ecosystem in India. Our purchasing volume in India in the last five years has been around €750 million. This supply chain ecosystem has led to creation of close to 2,000 indirect jobs in India,” he mentioned.
Speaking of the continuing growth plans, the Thales senior government mentioned they’re now accelerating native growth initiatives which embrace ramping up the engineering centres in Noida and Bengaluru. “We recently inaugurated our second state-of-the-art facility in Bengaluru to cater to our growth ambitions. Our Bangalore engineering centre has local teams working with our teams in France on flight avionics development programmes, including the new Flight Management System, PureFlyt,” said Mr. Ashraf.
These groups are additionally engaged on different high-value software program areas together with advanced avionics programs, in-flight leisure, cockpit connectivity, video programs, and radar software program, amongst others, he mentioned. “Our engineering centre in Noida specialises in digital activities spanning data protection and encryption, cybersecurity, biometrics, banking and payment solutions, among others,” he added.
India can also be in discussions with France for the acquisition of three extra Scorpene-class typical submarines of Naval Group, in which Thales additionally has a stake. These submarines are to be manufactured in India.
